University of Virginia Library

GIBBON'S ‘MEMOIRS’

26
He lived to learn, to watch his knowledge grow

He lived to learn, to watch his knowledge grow,
Nightly to question what advance precise
Twelve hours had given to that tide of ice.
If passionate, passionate only to lay low
Soul-highness, polishing his word-gems slow
As tides work pebbles smooth, until his nice
Sarcastic taste could say—‘Let this suffice!’
Marvel not then that to love's creed his no
He hiss'd, and in the volume of his book
Suspected every lily for its whiteness,
All large heart-poetry for lack of prose.
The Alpine majesty, the ample rose,
The novelties of God he could not brook—
The love that is of love the essential Brightness.

27
Wherefore his picture evermore was hued

Wherefore his picture evermore was hued
Over with colours, peradventure fine,
But mixed not for a Heav'n-conceived design.
A creed that like the sacred mountains stood
Sunlighted depth or moonlit amplitude,
Majestic, measureless, with trim tape-line
Did he attempt, and scorn'd, being undivine,
The excess divine, the tropic rain of God.
Faith's flowers must die where heart-air is so chilly;
Fair must seem false when love's so little kind,
Denying love when love is nobly new.
The virgin's fingers fold a tarnish'd lily
For those who scorn virginity. The blind
Are proof against sweet proof that Heav'n is blue.

28
Yet with what art, thro' what enormous space

Yet with what art, thro' what enormous space,
With what innumerous threads how deftly plann'd,
Silverly separate in the subtle hand,
He winds the stories to their central place!
Nothing so false as may such art disgrace;
But colours here deliberately wann'd,
There as of fabled sunsets fading grand
Upon grey gods of high pathetic face.
Faint thro' the laurel groves of Antioch
The last hymn dies, and the earth's large regret
Divinely wails thro' many a dusk-gold lawn.
Then a stern symbol rises from the rock—
The cross of Roman Syria grimly set,
Leafless, dim-lit in leaden-colour'd dawn.