 | A Lost Epic and Other Poems |  |
What pageants these of his! He spoke of Art;—
And the sea-crinkled, ice-cragged, palm-plumed world
Spread like a marvellous map before the eye;
And vaguely seen in dimly shimmering light,
Lo! Man the Artist wrought. Before his cave
Th' autochthon sketched upon a mammoth's tooth
The picture of a mammoth, chipped the flint
To shape of prehistoric man or beast.
Tribes perished, forests crumbled, sea and land
Changed places, and the stars changed colour and place
In changing skies, but Man the Artist lived—
Scratched, whittled, painted, grew in eye and hand;
Pictured the river-bluffs, the rocky walls
Of sea-carved creeks, the snow-capped precipice,
The ice-borne boulder on the tropic isle,
Till sun and moon, fish, reptile, bird and flower,
Mammal and Man, on ivory, slate, horn, rock,
Ringed with strange zodiacs all the savage globe!
And nations perished, cities rose and fell,
And Man the Artist lived and wrought and throve,
Grew bold in thought and opulent in means,
Survived all wreck, till Titian, Raphael came—
For life indeed is short and art is long!
And the sea-crinkled, ice-cragged, palm-plumed world
Spread like a marvellous map before the eye;
And vaguely seen in dimly shimmering light,
Lo! Man the Artist wrought. Before his cave
Th' autochthon sketched upon a mammoth's tooth
The picture of a mammoth, chipped the flint
To shape of prehistoric man or beast.
Tribes perished, forests crumbled, sea and land
Changed places, and the stars changed colour and place
In changing skies, but Man the Artist lived—
Scratched, whittled, painted, grew in eye and hand;
Pictured the river-bluffs, the rocky walls
Of sea-carved creeks, the snow-capped precipice,
The ice-borne boulder on the tropic isle,
7
Mammal and Man, on ivory, slate, horn, rock,
Ringed with strange zodiacs all the savage globe!
And nations perished, cities rose and fell,
And Man the Artist lived and wrought and throve,
Grew bold in thought and opulent in means,
Survived all wreck, till Titian, Raphael came—
For life indeed is short and art is long!
| A Lost Epic and Other Poems | |