University of Virginia Library

It was a mighty hall, a splendid space
Of pleasant twilight, an enchanted place;
A high-built palace hung in middle blue,
By arrowy rays without a mote shot through,
With sudden shafts, a multitudinous maze,
That interpenetrate it a thousand ways.
Without the deep and dark-blue circle spread,
Within faint purple light its lustre shed.
Calm was its grandeur as the sunset fire,
Of some heroic and supreme desire,
That bathed a world in beauty at its birth,
And dying left a glory on the earth
Living and growing. And its bulk was wrought,
Like the great compass of a kingly thought,
Above our blessing and beyond our curse,
Which is a part of all the universe;
Vast, measureless, and pompous, in suspense
Poised, in the central heart of the Immense;
By quintessential substance and the form
Of added art, made manifold and warm;
Glowing with wealth, and spiritual bloom
Mildly refulgent from the purple gloom.
Nor lacked it aught of fair and good, of grace
Which elevates and purifies a place.
And here the mighty men, who sometime were
The brain o' the world, had gathered without stir;
For all was calmly jubilant, and all
Sat silent in the shadow of the hall.
It was a pile no mortal builder made,
Mingled with many a solemn light and shade—
An awful fabrie knit of ghostly stones,
Made populous and venerable with thrones,
Running with flux of rainbow-coloured brooks,
And pierced by lightning of lascivious looks
From stately women, who danced to and fro
With flying feet as soft as falling snow—
Dabbled in tears and painted o'er with blood;
But ruined blossom and unvirgin bud
Clove to their head-gear pendulous, and filled
The hair with colour and sad scents distilled.
But immaterial stones upbare the frame
Of that o'ershadowing dome, and flowers of flame
Bloomed on the twilight, shaping into words;
And far away faint music as of birds
Sang; to its sound the amorous women kept
Responsive movements, and most lightly leapt.

About a mighty table, propt at ease,
Lapt in luxurious dreams and smeared with lees
Of deep-drunk juices; on the lip above
And under, for the simple social love
Which charmeth revellers, drenched with vinous spray;
Their thronéd foreheads crowned with splendid bay,
And chapleted and filleted like gods—
Like them august with the imperial rods
Of judgment; grouped as gracious stars in heaven,
Here clustered two or three, there six or seven;
Ceased philosophic spirits, who on earth
Did coin their brain in thoughts of golden worth.
Here old Pythagoras, mystical and mild
(A sleeping ocean dim and undefiled),
Mate and mysterious, clothed with saintly white,
In vision wandered through successions bright
Of being, unconscious of his peers around,
Or numbered in great thought one self the ground;
Superbly fashioned, like the idea of man,
As it appeared to God ere He began
To make the work Fate after marred—a thing
Of noble act, and nobler purposing.
But many fair and giant forms abound,
And many holy lowly notes resound;
Not fleshly faces, but the informing fire,
Aspiring, full of hunger and desire,
Yet mitigated to wise impulse, tamed,
Free from old curbs yet not of law ashamed;
And not terrestial are the effusive notes,
The liguid tribute of sweet human throats—
Flesh hath no part in these serene retreats,
Which peace in God with happiness completes.
For through their being, with an influx vast,
The awful presence of the Maker past;
The silent power of a tremendous spell,
A rolling tide-wave, irresistible;
Creating still He all their nature shook,
Thrilled in each thought, and flashed in every look.
There Socrates rests, in a dark-browed group,
And dimly talks, and questioning doth stoop
His furrowed face, to meet their faces bent
And bowed toward him, in mild uncontent
Of upturned eyebrows and of lifted lids,
Of gathered lips and twitch that nor forbids
Nor praises; he, with studied ignorance,
And irony of Attic shield and lance,
Seems deprecating combat and yet fights—
Merging himself i'the method, he delights
In its victorious issue; they, perplexed,
Wear finer self-esteem than to be vexed.
And like the sighing of a summer sea
Troubled in sleep, their voices rise and flee.

Now round an old man, garrulous and meek.
Who murmurs to his soul and doth not speak,
Who prattles like a child, and holds debate
In whispers as with sophists good and great,
Flit naked boys, with bloomy cheek and lip,
From which they tempt him honey-dew to sip,
To suck the blood of love and draw sweet breath,
That he may touch and drink the indwelling death;
Fair, waving flowers and fruits in eloquent
Uplifted hands, with artful bodies bent—
Flitting and flying round him and before,
Undoing what they do, for evermore.
The women too that weave the rhythmic dance,
Draw nearer to his words of wise romance,
Link lovely hands and feet and then unweave
Their woven work, and gracefully deceive—
Spin tangled webs of wondrous depth, to win
By rhetoric of radiant eyes, soft sin,
The innocent ancient sage, to their fond ways
Of blandishment and sweet libidinous gaze;
Revealing half, half hiding the wild charms
Of heretofore, and winding unwound arms.
But he far-seeing, unconcerned, urbane,
Secure and calmly catholic, humane—
Like some glad quiet brook through moonlight wan—
Smiles, flows, and garrulously babbles on,
For ever wandering in delicious dreams,
Down fancy's ancient and enchanted streams.
And the broad shoulders and the lifted brows
With cross-cut lines, the contemplative drowse,
The low lisped Attic syllables, betray
Plato's melodious maze and silver say.

The feast flows on, boys tempt, and women make
Music and motion—their lithe bodies shake,
And mingle like mixed serpents serpentine;
From thickest hair fall scents of flowers and wine,
From humid hair wine steams, and casual flowers
Drop, and reluctance chains the dancing hours.
Now in a double orb, a waving wealth
Of feet and hands, with subtlety and stealth
The dancers twine their snaky snares about
A holy figure, edging in and out,
Saluting him with gesture and soft sign
Of full-lipped love, as Father and Divine.
A form austere and chaste, and simply grand,
Is that grave pious man; a golden band
Coerces his great carven brows, a thing
Of royalest rare gold, as offering
Men dedicate to some dark god supreme,
Who stirs the human heart with fear and dream.
Most continent he seems and most devout,
Most full of love, yet emptied not of doubt;
His eye regards, or it appears to see,
The unveiled glory of Infinity,
In beatific vision; and delight
Fulfils his subtle soul, with light and might—
An inward glow possession cannot cloy,
An awful incommunicable joy.
But from his tremulous lips, half white, half red,
And wholly curled in prayer, this say is said—
As an ecstatic underbreath, a tone
Mixed with the indwelling God intensely known—
“Who loves but God he asks for nothing more,
For love it is sufficient to adore.”
The veneration and the trance, the gleam
Gladdening his wondrous eyes, the distant dream,
A mouth fed full of praise as breath, an air
And circumstance of vast benignant care—
All mark the upright seer, the outcast Jew,
Spinoza, who lost all to gain the True.