Poems and Transcripts | ||
III. POEMS IN LYRICAL METRES
THE SONG OF THE PLASTER CAST.
In the following poem I have attempted to tell the story of a Greek statue; not of this or of that individual copy of it,—for of nearly every great antique, antiquity alone has given us four or five copies, which in modern times have been reproduced indefinitely in marble or plaster,—but of that which constitutes the identity of the statue—which makes us say, in the presence of a plaster cast, or merely of a drawing, “This is the Discobulus of Myron,” “This is the Faun of Praxiteles,”—in short, of the form, of the conception which arose in the mind of the sculptor, and which he, first, embodied, but which may be indefinitely repeated — the form which corresponds in the statue to that purely intellectual identity that makes the Iliad the Iliad, Paradise Lost Paradise Lost, in whichever of a hundred different editions it may be seen; as much in the half-crown copy which we buy to-dya, as in the earliest manuscript existing. This abstract form, and not its individual embodiment in stone or metal, is the statue; and my object has been to trace the many changes of substance through which the form of a renowned Greek Venus has been handed down to us in all its identity.
By Time's ever-raging Storm
Ever spared.
Even in this Plaster Cast,
Lives my beauty of the Past
Unimpaired.
In an image all divine:
Aphrodité, newly risen
From the Ocean's bitter brine.
And from marble into bronze,
And to marble then reverted;
For my antique beauty dons
Now one substance, now the other;
And in each I have asserted
My identity to men.
Clay and bronze and marble perished,
But the statue did not die,
For its very form am I.
What the Sculptor's genius cherished,
What the Sculptor's genius gives,
That was saved, and in me lives.
Slowly, sadly o'er my head,
And the world has long grown old,
And the tongues I heard are dead,
Since the finger of the Greek
Made the dimple in my cheek.
Nations, creeds, and arts and glories
Came, and lived, and passed away;
But the dimple still endureth,
As upon my earliest day.
Dost thou ask me for the secret
Of my endless youth and fame?
I will tell thee how, unaltered,
Through the centuries I came.
In an age of strength and peace,
After Salamis was won;
When beneath his tempered sun,
Man, secure from every storm,
In the beauty of the form
Found his best and highest pleasure;
And the secret of all measure
He possessed;
When in marble he expressed
All his fancy's fair creations;
Gods of beauty, Gods of gladness,
Who, in human semblance dressed,
Ruled a world too young for sadness;
Or the motley brood of Pan,
Who, through wood and field and meadow,
In perennial riot ran.
On whose pediment I stood,
Moved a life
With beauty rife,
And rife with good.
Slowly wound the long procession
Through the temple-bordered street,
With its tall Corinthian columns
Which extended at my feet;
And a look the sun-burnt maidens
Often upwards to me cast,
As they passed,
With their load of fruits and flowers;
And the stalwart youths who followed,
In an endless cavalcade,
All in colours bright arrayed;
And the many-voiced echoes
Of the games fell on my ear,
And the shouting of the crowd,
In its exultation loud,
To this day I seem to hear.
For the marble Gods looked on,
While the Olympic race was won;
While the noblest youths contended,
Strong of heart and lithe of limb;
And the loud triumphal hymn,
Hailed the victor, as he wended,
In his strength and beauty splendid,
With the palm to place his name
On the sacred roll of Fame,
Which all time should fail to dim.
Grew less strong and grew less bright,
And the art which at my birth
Reached its zenith upon earth,
Slowly, slowly, slowly waned;
Shining with a fading splendour,
Growing softer and more tender,
Till at length,
Nought of greatness or of strength
There remained.
That on Earth,
Seed of Death to all be given
At its birth.
Must decay.
Every star must at its zenith
Wane away.
Every fountain's rising column
Forms a curve;
All things this commandment solemn
Must observe.
Nought may at its zenith linger,
But must move;
Fate with its resistless Finger
Gives the shove.
Every art and every greatness
Spends its force,
And in earliness or lateness
Takes this course.
Was blunted in the hands of men,
As the sense of art decayed;
But the keen and shining blade,
Wrought by Freedom for the Greek,
Grew too quickly blunt and dim;
And the spirit and the limb
Both were weak.
First the heavy thraldom knew
Of the iron-sided masters
Of a world that ever grew;
And the accents unfamiliar
Of the terser Roman tongue
Sounded on the shores, where Pindar,
The immortal, once had sung.
In the unresisting land,
On the statues that were fairest,
Fell the robbing Roman hand.
And the hard rapacious Prætors
Of the ever greedy Rome,
Dragged a marble people captive
From its beauteous island home.
And the myrtle and the bay,
And the clear and rapid rills,
Whose unceasing murmur fills
Every valley on the way,
From the centre to the strand,
Of the little Attic land
Of my birth.
Stretching in a silvery sea,
Warm and calm;
And the rock-begirded islands,
Whence in noon's long dreamy hours,
Comes the scent of many flowers,
Hidden in the woods of palm.
I was dragged;
And the soldier people bragged
Of their distant martial feats,
And the trophies they had got;
But they felt my beauty not.
As the tardy years went by,
In the houses of the great;
And my masters made me stand,
And look down upon their state
From my pedestal on high;
Till at last, placed and displaced,
Nero's golden house I graced;
Where I saw, amid the din
Of the orgie, all the sin
Of the worlds that slowly rot;
But my soul was sullied not.
For the round gigantic Mole,
Tomb of Hadrian eternal,
And watched the yellow Tiber roll,
E'en as rolled the flood of Ages,
Towards a distant sea unknown;
Bearing creeds and arts and nations,
Leaving me behind alone.
From the shore of Time I watched them
Pass unconscious on their way,
While my brow remained unfurrowed,
Fair as on my native day.
For the beauty of the statue,
And the beauty of the bust,
Shall endure in youth untarnished,
Till they crumble into dust.
When the giant Mole, transformed
To a fortress stern and grey,
Underneath, and far and wide,
Surged the fierce barbarian tide,
With a loud and angry roar,
Wave on wave against us bore,
And upward dashed,
While the ram resistless crashed,
And a thousand arrows rained
On to statues, on to men,
And the stainless marble then
Deep was stained.
In their ugly pools of red
Lay the dying and the dead,
At my feet.
From their high, time-honoured seat,
Statues, wonders of the world,
Headlong from the walls were hurled,
Through the missile-blackened air,
In the madness of despair.
And the flames of war rose high,
And a lurid radiance now,
Like a deeper sunset's glow,
Filled the sky.
Bore my form in human sight,
Which had lived a thousand summers,
Perished in a single night.
'Twas the stone alone that died;
For, though men may seem to conquer,
'Tis the Gods alone decide.
Stood beneath a golden dome,
In a long-deserted villa,
Of the dying, dying Rome.
Fell with the frescoes each year from the walls;
Age and desertion worked faster and faster,
Now in the silent, still beautiful halls.
Only we statues, 'mid rank vegetation,
Peopled the portico, garden, and court;
Man seldom troubled the dull desolation,
Never he gave us a look or a thought.
Down from the ceilings, on floors of mosaic,
Crumbled the cornices, hiding them fast;
Till on what lingered of beauty Archaic,
Inward the roofs fell like thunder at last.
All was now shapeless; the statues, once splendid,
Lay in the heap, from their pedestals hurled;
Gently the mould, the encroacher, all ended:
That which was beauty had passed from the world.
Deep imbedded in the clay;
And the ground above the sleeper
Grew unnoticed ever deeper,
Day by day.
Overhead
Lived their little life
Of an hour,
Like the flower
Beauties courted and superb
Felt decay
And passed away,
Like a breath;
Knowing nothing of the beauty,
Ever radiant,
Underneath.
Which had come upon the earth;
And the world's fair face had wrinkled,
Since the days which gave me birth.
Still the Sun's unwearied chariot
Crossed the ether as before;
But the young and radiant Phœbus
Held its golden reins no more.
Still the forest depths were shady,
Still were green the woodland lawns;
But they now no more were peopled
By the shy and happy fauns.
Still the streams and still the fountains
Murmured as they passed along;
But the Naiads now no longer
Turned their murmur into song.
In the fields there were no pipings,
For an unknown voice had said,
On the silent shores of Hellas,
Long ago, that Pan was dead.
In men's hearts there was no gladness;
Hushed was every sound of mirth.
But a litany incessant
Rose to Heaven from the Earth.
Sounded now the evening bell;
And the world, no longer youthful,
Learned the meaning of a knell.
In the cloister's gloom, unloving,
Paced the morbid monk or nun,
Who a mortal sin esteemed it,
To feel young or love the Sun.
On the dark cathedral buttress,
Imps of stone with face of ape,
Carved by an ignoble chisel,
Mocked the godlike human shape,
While I, the human shape's perfection,
In the earth lay hidden deep,
Till a nobler generation
Should awake me from my sleep.
When the secret of the past
Was disclosed;
And when men the Venus found
Who for ages in the ground
Had reposed.
And again, as at my birth,
To all corners of the earth,
Hurried Fame;
But it was decreed by Fate,
That she should not tell the great
Sculptor's name;
And though I the secret ken,
I reveal it not to men,
Nor may speak:
This alone I can impart,
And was Greek.
And a thousand reproductions
Of my beauty were sent forth,
And were scattered 'mong the nations,
East and West, and South and North.
While I stand in marble costly
In the palaces at Rome,
I am seen in humble plaster,
In the poorest artist's home.
I am not the bronze, the marble,
Nor the ivory and gold,
But the form impressed upon them,
By a mighty hand of old;
Little matters what the substance;
And my beauty of the Past,
Liveth unimpaired and splendid,
Even in a Plaster Cast.
THE EVER-YOUNG.
Sculptured, painted, writ, or sung;
For the ages o'er them pass,
Light as breezes o'er the grass.
While grows old the human clay,
Never can they feel decay;
But the while the world grows older
Grow no duller, grow no colder,
And from their eternal truth,
Live in a perpetual youth.
On the marble Venus' brow?
Was she younger on the morrow
Of her birth than she is now?
Yet above that marble head
Twenty centuries have fled!
Mars a single thread of silver
Saint Ceeilia's chestnut hair?
Is she older, is she colder
Than when Rafael was there?
Have since then grown old and grey!
Is our Shakespeare's Juliet older
Than the day she saw the light?
Would not Romeo still enfold her
In his arms, as on that night?
When a thousand years are cast
On the heap we call the Past,
Will the music of Mozart
Be less youthful for the heart?
A PALIMPSEST.
Framed in language strong and terse;
Ye repeat and re-repeat me,
In your dull pedantic schools,
Till I lose all sense and beauty,
In the mouths of learnéd fools;
And they know not whence they got me,
Nor the reason of my fame;
And they ask not how, unaltered,
Through the centuries I came;
My perfection is undying,
As the love of Man for Art;
If by chance a Poet meets me,
Straight I reach unto his heart.
In a monastery grey,
Hidden under other ink,
By the men who loved to pray,
And who knew not how to think.
But a day arrived at last,
When my beauty of the past,
Saw again the heavens' light;
For a cunning hand effaced
Every word above me traced
On the parchment old and shrunk,
By the Monk.
As I thus appeared again;
But it yet was all-sufficient
Immortality to gain.
Beauty, hid 'neath dusty layers,
Oft no sign for ages gives;
But it lives;
And the moment you release it,
Will once more enchant and conquer;
For, like Truth,
Beauty lives in endless youth.
VENUS UNBURIED.
A statue slept;
And Time, the silent witness of her birth,
The secret kept.
A face of love,
Of radiant beauty, such as would allure
The Gods above.
In the world's youth;
A temple raised to her who holds profane
All forms uncouth.
Its proud array;
The city grew and flourished, then decayed,
And passed away.
Of lord and slave,
And on the spot the ripened corn then rolled
Its golden wave.
Above her head;
And many bodies by her side were brought;
She touched the dead.
And left no trace;
Their very nations' names were wiped at last
From the earth's face.
'Twas but to fall,
And still the statue, in her deep repose,
Outlived them all.
The corn had stirred;
And o'er the sleeper browsed beneath the trees
An antlered herd.
From acorn sprung;
But still no sound the sleeping goddess woke,
For ever young.
And passed away;
All save a single oak of mighty girth,
All gnarled and grey.
With merry dance,
Turned into lovers meeting in its shade,
With furtive glance.
All bent and shrunk;
Who sat and watched their children's children there,
Play round its trunk.
Of its own youth;
And still the statue slept with radiant brow,
As pure as Truth.
The giant oak;
It died, as giants die, resisting well
Stroke upon stroke.
The earth was cleft;
And where the roots had fastened in the ground,
A chasm left.
In wild alarm,
And swore a form had beckoned from the dead,
With ghostly arm.
And there beheld
A lovely form, that with its marble hand
The rootlets held.
Of heaven above;
And smiled on man, as in the distant Past,
The smile of love.
When, at her birth,
She wrung her hair, and by her presence gave
New life to earth.
The statue saw:
Prince, artist, poet, philosopher and priest,
And man of law.
The force of love;
And felt his soul by heavenly power raised
To spheres above.
From sounds uncouth;
To tell her story of a distant day,
In the world's youth.
Of Hellas trod;
And man, though proud of being man, yet strove
To be a God.
The human form;
And gave to marble life's celestial thrill,
And impulse warm;
To every Greek;
And man in all things found a hidden soul,
And made it speak.
THE SECRET OF THE BUSENTO.
Sleeps the great Barbarian King,
While his requiem for ever
Overhead the waters sing.
Was he laid in days of old,
In a triple bier enshrouded,
Wrought of silver, bronze, and gold.
Where lies Alaric the Goth?
Thou hast sworn to hide the sleeper?
Time absolves thee of thy oath.
To the startled river-bank;
While the world still living thought him,
They the coffined monarch sank.
Deep within its rocky bed,
Him the greatest of their dead.
On the little party broke,
The Arian Chiefs a word of warning
To the listening River spoke:
To thy bosom we confide;
Let thy depths no stranger measure,
But the King for ever hide.
Let it keep his tomb from shame;
In thy charge we leave his ashes,
In the world's his endless fame.”
Under night's protecting wing,
Those stern Gothic warriors buried
Alaric their mighty King.
Rolled o'er his eternal home,
So the great barbaric torrent
Rolled on o'er the grave of Rome.
Hun and Alan, wave on wave,
None of all their kings unnumbered
Had as grand or safe a grave.
Well hast thou the secret kept,
Fourteen centuries of story,
Undisturbed the Goth has slept.
Keep his plighted word than thou;
Alone the poet in thy murmur
Hears the name of Alaric now.
THE VAULT OF THE ESCURIAL.
In death Spain's monarchs lay,
Around a lofty crucifix
In grand and dread array.
The hollow echoes there;
Upon its hinge no door had turned
To let in other air.
A King with stifled breath:
That rapid flight of steps that kings
Descend not save in death.
His haggard face expose:
He comes to view the vault where soon
He shall himself repose.
He seeks for one beloved;
The wife whom death had, youthful still,
In beauty's pride removed.
In seeming sleep she lies;
While, oh! how changed the face of him
That stares with straining eyes!
Upon her upturned face,
Then, raving and blaspheming, fled
In madness from the place.
PIETRO MICCA.
AUGUST 30, 1706.
The French are pouring in!
Away, away! 'tis all in vain,
And nought can save Turin!”
The sappers stood in doubt:
They heard from that dark bastion-vault
The foe's exulting shout;
A sound of many feet;
The French were thundering at the door,
To cut off their retreat.
Unto the other two:—
“Ye see the train could ne'er be laid;
Without a train we'll do.
And I will be the man;
The French are on us! quick! farewell!
Escape while still ye can.”
His speech with bated breath.
Small time there was to speak a word;
They left him to his death.
To shake his purpose wild;
And bade him, ere the match he burned,
Give thought to wife and child.
And cried, “'Twill be too late!
Run, while the minutes thou hast got,
Or thou shalt share my fate!”
The fatal minutes fled,
And Micca, with his match alone,
Could hear the French o'erhead.
Two companies were there.
Himself, the bastion, and them all,
He hurled into the air!
And as a fiery rain,
Upon the rent and quivering world,
Descended back again.
A silence strange and long;
Afraid the birds that morning were,
To sing their morning song.
A single cloud of smoke,
Which slowly sailed across the sky,
As soft Aurora woke.
The sun in splendour rose.
No vestige of that deed of flame,
Its author or his foes!
The French were beaten down;
And Prince Eugene arrived and freed
The long-beleaguered town.
Poems and Transcripts | ||