University of Virginia Library

XX.

[As through the world's great show of Sixty-two]

As through the world's great show of Sixty-two
I wander'd, gazed and marvell'd, in my soul
A solemn humiliation most prevail'd.
In all that concentration of man's art,
I had no hand; none ask'd me, Would I help?
That beauty, ingenuity and skill—
The outcome of the world's far forward day—
Were none of mine. The savage, with his tools
Of shell and flint, contributed his craft,
And help'd the world to move: the beasts that range
The pathless desert gave as much as I.
My only claim was, that I went to see.
And that was something. He that, looking on,
Says in his heart, Well done! makes smoother way
For all that is to follow, and thus aids
The onward move unconsciously. But he
Who is himself no doer, and who looks
Not to admire, but only to pick flaws—

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95

Though perfect even as his own conceit—
What is he but a drag upon the age?—
So if I did not add one thing of use
Or beauty, I could freely give my heart,
With all its plaudits. If in my own vein
I also could work out a thought or two,
And lay them on the altar of our day,
Then might I through my offering find peace.—
For what had all those things once been but thoughts,
Embodied now in forms? the whole a thought
Of Albert, the good prince, who was indeed
A king—unknown as such till he was lost.

In those bright summer days of Sixty-two,
All hearts, all trains, all boats seem'd making up
For London; and, when there, 'buses and cabs,
And keen pedestrians, through every street,
All crowded to one centre with one aim,
Which seem'd to make broad-cloth and fustian one,
And nations all one brotherhood. For there,
Britons and Franks, the Russian and the Turk,
Forgot their wars; the three-times-injured Pole
Almost, if not forgot, forgave his wrongs.
There came the ancient Dane, the blue-eyed Swede,
And Norway's hardy sons; the brave Magyar;
The German, drowsy with deep thought and smoke;
The mountain Swiss, whom tyrants could not bow;
The Greek of great descent—alas, how great!
Italia's sons, all music; and the Don,
Proud of Castilian blood. And from the East,

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96

The old, old East, Caliphs and Viziers came,
In whose loose sumptuous garments we re-read
All the Arabian tales. E'en China sent
A few celestial eyes to be enlarged
In the barbarian's show. From isles unknown,
And countries far, far inland, came strange men
Of every hue. And even the embattled States,
Unmatch'd for ingenuity, could spare
From deadly strife, their sons—alas, too few!

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97

Some pass'd by
The jewell'd wonders with a slighting glance,
And sought the industrial courts; there to behold
The myriad skill'd machinery at work.
The clicking looms wove out their pictured hues
Like dawn, as if behind their flickering skeins
A guiding spirit moved; and queer machines,
Fed with some raw material, did work
That only heads and hands, we thought, could do.
Models of engines, too, in brass and steel,
Supplied with tiny arteries of steam,
Work'd noiselessly as thought.—Ah! there it was—
Within those busy courts—my wasted life
The most upbraided me. Those things had come

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98

Out of the brains of men since I was born,
And made a new world, while I drowsed and dream'd.

Among the minerals and chemicals
There was not much to catch the thoughtless eye;
But let the mind once look at them, and soon
The day was gone in wonder. There we saw,
Before us laid, the vitals of the earth;
The ores, so little use ere yet man's thought
Was breathed into them—with the living brain
To fuse, refine and fashion them, the wealth
Of nations and their warlike arbiters;—
And all the essences that chemistry
Has found for us in most unlikely things—
Rank poisons even in our wholesome food,
And in most noxious refuse sweetest balms;—
Compacts of Nature loosen'd and reduced
To single elements, their secrets bared,
All save the one great secret that combined

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99

The sever'd parts: it pass'd unseen beneath
The chemist's eye, pass'd like a soul at death.
This was the elixir that, in old times,
The men accounted wizards tried to find,
By crucible and fire. It is the same
That gives the poesie to poets' lines,
But passes, likewise, if they are analyzed:
The same that mystics in their visions see,
But, bringing other eyes to be enrich'd,
Can show them nothing: for of old 'twas written,
That never man by search might find it out.

But on, on through the gorgeous wilderness—
For we are busy people when at home,
And here our time is short. From court to court
We visited the nations of the earth,
With all their waving flags and countless products;
Our hovering eyes, like bees in plots of flowers,
Afraid to light, lest in some special bloom
We lose the wingèd day. On through the courts,
And dipping out into the dazzling aisles,
And passing carelessly a world of things,
The poorest one of which were in our eyes
A household god, if in our little homes.—
But there were some creations there, that stood
In rings of gazing eyes all through the days,—
As that death-struggle of two Danes in bronze,
With quaint home-legends round its pedestal
In sorrowing bas-reliefs: it was, in sooth,
A long day's study, and it went far back

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100

Among the deep affections of the heart.
Or that all-beauteous form, that marble dream,
Our Gibson's tinted Venus, whose blue eyes
And breathing limbs made all pale sculpture dead,
To him who once on that sweet vision gazed.—
But wherefore name, where everything deserved
A special note? 'Twere best to leave them all
Without report,—as when, in Shakspeare's page,
I first began to mark the golden lines,
But gave it up on finding every line,
If not all gold, at least so deftly turn'd,
That it became a part of England's tongue,
For aye to be remember'd.

But aloft,
To winding galleries the dense crowds press.
Some linger o'er the products of the looms—
The snow-white linens, and the gorgeous silks,
And cottons, many hued; but most pass on
To the great halls, wherein the limner's art
Had clad the walls with pictured histories,
And legends, allegories, famous dreams,
Of tragedy and farce. And there, to stand
Before the very work that Hogarth did,
And Wilkie, Etty, Landseer and Maclise!
The master-works wherewith, at second-hand,
The graver's skill has dower'd all our homes.
But here again, to name, I feel the old
Shakspearian futility, and leave,
Without the risk of dragging one great work

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101

Into obscurer light, out of its heaven
Of silent admiration, speechless gaze.