University of Virginia Library

THE CONVERSION OF WINCKELMANN

I

[An attendant enters, addresses Wincklemann, and retires.]

II Rome

The Villa Albani

“Had I but known, I might have spared my scruples.
The dreaming mind makes nightmares for itself
In broadest daylight, and mine well-nigh choked
Just before waking. What fantastic fears!
Jove on the Capitol is templed still,
Mars on his mount, and Venus everywhere.
Unabdicating Gods, they take their seats
Within the very shrines my fancy filled
With gaze of keen inquisitors to watch
My thoughts, and if I verily believed.
This clear-eyed, big-brained, pagan Papacy
Is much too busy contemplating gems,
And turning blurred intaglios to the light,
To spare the time for canonising saints,
Or worrying sinners: just the Rome for me,
And I the very man for such a Rome.
This flowing mantle, this black velvet robe,
These snow-white bands, are pleasant to the limbs,
The eye, the touch, and do, I think, become me.
But if my kith in Stendhal were to deem
That I am an Abate, save my cloak,
They would but show their Northern simpleness.
“In what a goodly company I sit!
There, Jupiter, with Empire on his brow,
But calm in self-held counsel, undisturbed
By purposes participated, or
The gusty misdirection of the crowd.
There, Hermes, not yet dwarfed to Mercury,
Winged at the head and sandalled at the heel,
Heaven's messenger alert, whose stolen strings,
Stretched deftly o'er the sluggish tortoise' shell,
Make instant music: Virgin Artemis,
Kept chaste by action and the brisk embrace
Of Morning, bright and chilly as her spear,
Her bare feet diamonded with meadow dew,
And twin-leashed boarhounds baying at her side,
Beating Arcadian covert: all the Gods
Radiant around me! No Madonnas here,
Contorted martyrs, scranny confessors,
To wean composure from the breast of joy.
And not alone the deathless denizens
Of Hades and Olympus drink the light
Of these cool corridors, but mortal men,
Almost as godlike as the gods themselves
By marble will and majesty of mind,—
The Macedonian with his manly tears
At frontier of ambition; Hannibal
Unvanquished by his victors, 'spite defeat
Foremost of those who tread the ways of war;
The Samian Sage, the vulgar travesty,
Who made himself a garden, and enjoined,
No carnal epicure, the goal of man
Is still felicity, but that the road
Lies along cleanly and imperial ways,
Not swinish by-paths; Homer, with his gaze
Surveying all, and therefore fixed on none,
The Poet outside all things, he alone,
The Reconciler, with his concords twain,
Song and ensuing Silence;—all are here,
Indulgent of my presence, claiming me
Their servitor, if faithful then their friend,
Their equal, by their grace and courtesy.
Such will I strive to be, but not to-day,
When, look! upon the fountain's marble rim
Rounding the plashing music, April doves,
Just like to Pliny's in the Capitol,
Sip and glance sideways, flutter, perch again,
And preen their purple feathers in the sun,
Ausonian sun that fills the chalices
Of tulip and anemone with light
Mellower than Montefiascone's wine.
Along the coping of the stuccoed wall
See Juno's pompous sentinels parade
The jewels of their self-supporting train.
Stirred by the very faintest breath that scarce
Would rob the roundness of the thistledown,
Flutters the olive, and with upturned leaves
Silvers the golden sunlight. At the tips
Of the pruned vine-stems glisten drops of dew,
The promise of their shortly dawning shoots.
Hark! 'twas the hoopoe! heralding the bird
Who talks to Spring of nothing but himself,
So likewise half an egoist, as is meet,
Apeing his betters, but imperfectly.
To fig-tree bole the green frog clings and croaks,
And the lithe lizard squats along the wall,
Fagged by its very restlessness, and takes
Siesta in the sunshine, not the shade.
Taught by the almond how to bloom, the peach
Hath bettered now the lesson, and the pear,
Forgoing useless rivalry, arrays
Itself in whiteness. Every ruined wall
Breaks into blossom, every shattered arch
Its wrinkled baldness now festoons with flowers,
To join the Saturnalia of the Spring.
I hear the cask-piled wine-carts creaking slow
O'er the Nomentan Way, hear them, but see not,
Save with the sight responsive to the sound,
In sweet confusion of the senses made
Kindred. There is no iris now in Heaven,
But, finding Earth yet heavenlier, it hath dropped
In coils and jewelled fragments to the ground,
And wavers over the Campagna wide.
Days are there, like to this one, when 'tis well
To lie supine in poppied vacancy,
And, passionlessly passive, to conceive
Those hovering intimations that alight
On the lulled sense, impregnating the brain
With embryonic fancies that mature
In season unto shapeliness and fruit.
And so to-day I claim from Gods and men,
And my loved Alessandro, a forenoon
Of brooding lethargy,—to bask and purr
Over my fixed felicity.
“All is nought,
All lived and loved elsewhere, when matched with Rome.
I deemed myself a student amply armed
With bookish preparation, and that here
I should but see the treasures I surmised.
The veriest catechumen, I have passed,
With Passionei, Giacomelli, Mengs,
Corsini, and Cantucci, most of all
With Cardinal Albani, step by step,
Into Art's inmost mysteries, and now,
I live their equal, I the cobbler's son,
Spurned in the insolent and servile North,
Where all are clowns together. When I wake,
My princely Master—Master, but because
I love to call him so,—doth mount and sit
Familiar in my chamber, to discuss
The missing limbs of torso late unearthed
By some unlettered spade, and bids me choose
To-morrow's excavation, just as though
I were the Cardinal, and he the clerk
To register my wish. What men are these!
He but the first, the rest so like to him
In loveliness and largeness of their lives,
And speculations spacious as the dome
That copes the Roman ether, and as free
From matters' cloudy superfluities.
The titled boors of Brandenburg that scorned
My learning as my lineage, use their gold,
Lords of unlovely luxury, to scoop
Their swine-troughs deeper, grossly surfeiting
Their nether nature. Prince and Cardinal,
Whose veins are channels for the far-off blood
Of Alba or Lanuvium, consume
Their substance, as themselves, in marble Heavens
For Gods to haunt, and all mankind to scan,
Diviner for the seeing. Never here
Is homage to the menial body paid.
The mind alone is guest. No cushioned comfort
Distracts from limbs of beauty, brows of thought,
Nor is the ostentatious banquet spread,
Circean. 'Tis the soul alone that feasts;
Unclouded by the cup.
“But let none think
The nimble spirit's sportiveness is numbed
By Art's solemnity. On festal nights,
Hither my splendid Cardinal convenes
All the renown and jewelled grace of Rome
To glisten through his Villa. Nymph and Faun,
Persistent types, in modern modes disguised,
Consort with their progenitors embalmed
In unvoluptuous marble cold and calm.
They dance before our gravity, and wit
Sparkles like alabaster. Clement's self
Hath with his presence sanctified the scene,
Retiring scandalised, or seeming so
To save his holiness, nor stayed to hear
Battoni's lovely daughters, voice with voice,
Like two waves wantoning to be one, awhile
Eluding each the other, near, apart,
Till merged at length in one smooth melody.
“Gods! what a feast was yesterday! Behold
What, 'twixt the noon and evening Angelus,
We quarried in a vineyard near the Arch
Of Gallienus. No cold copy, that!
But so authentic from Hellenic hands,
That Phidias' self, or sure some touch like his,
Ere Attic genius strained beyond the point
Of absolute perfection, and so lost
Its even balance, might have chiselled it.
See! the young Knight this very moment hath
Sprung from his steed, that, lightened of the load,
And biassed by the bridle leftways clutched,
Rears foaming into air with incurved hoofs,
Nostrils dilated, terror-shaken mane,
Ruffling the marble. Gazing from the ground
At imminence of death, the fallen foe,
Entangled in his chlamys, lifts his arm,
Shield insufficient 'gainst the upward blade,
Flashing to fall. And with what slight effects
The chisel tells its tale! The tightened lips
Bespeak the victor's purpose, and the mouth,
Half open with the coming cry of fear,
The victim's fate. How little! yet enough.
Bernini, Buonarroti's bastard son,
Might learn his trade, if copyists e'er could learn,
By gazing on its simpleness. Pure Greek,
No Roman replica. Behind the head
Of the astonished steed, the background, see,
Is deeply hollowed out, that we may feel
The fulness of its terror, yet no line
Project beyond the marble's proper plane.
Where shall we find it fitting company?
The very place! 'Twill feel at home between
Antinoüs crested with the lotus-flower,
And the bronze statue by Praxiteles,
The lizard-slaying Musagete. No hand
Must maim its splendour, mending it. The mind,
And not manipulation, can supply
What Time hath taken. Let it keep its loss,
Like yon divine sarcophagus that weds
Peleus with Thetis, the fair Seasons four
Tricked in their emblematic imagery,
Hephaestus proffering the well-tempered sword,
Pallas her spear, and tender Hesperus
With sloping torch leading the way to love,
That falters on the threshold of its joy.

III Trieste

[Lying on a couch, mortally wounded.]
“Not broken on the wheel! For what? Why, then,
Where is the rack for me? He did no worse
Than I have done these twenty years, and I
Have had those years: he's empty-handed still.
Give him the gem: no, not the gem; that must
Go to Albani, but with strict command,
A dying man's, he do not part with it
To Countess Cheroffini. Not the gem.
Give him my gold, with Clement's head on it,
Mere modern dross, that yet will carry him
To Grecian shores, where there lies rusted gold
Richer than rubies. He hath an eye, 'tis sure,
For hand of Hellas, otherwise he ne'er
Had plunged his knife so deep into my breast
When I withheld the gem. I clung to it
As though salvation hung upon my grasp,
And so I die a martyr,—after all!
But to which Heaven? Olympus? Paradise?
That now seems not so clear as once it did.
In lengthening days of Lent, a hirsute monk,
Who fasted all the year, would come from out
His frozen cell on topmost Apennine,
To drag us Christian Sybarites along
The Stations of the Cross that sanctify
The Flavian Amphitheatre, and fright
Our sunny souls with talk of mists of Death.
There is no mist upon Death's mirror now,
Wherein I see my life reflected clear,
Blurred and refracted hitherto. By what?
By love of Beauty? That can hardly be;
For Beauty is the soul of all things good.
Which Beauty, though? Is there, then, more than one?
I know my father was an honest man.
He would not call me so; and honesty
Is Beauty after all. I grow confused.
But do not put Arcangeli on the wheel.
Had he for lucre roped me by the neck,
You should have broken him on a thousand racks.
But 'twas the carven wonder made him ply
The murderous noose. I almost think he might,
With study, wax to be a connoisseur
Expert as I; and few there are who could:
And there are herma, meta, puteal,
By hundreds, waiting their interpreter.
Whose deed was darker, think you, his or mine,
If dark be either? Instantaneous,—
The artist's native impulse, the strong hands,
Lured by the fascination of the gem,—
Was his quick act. Mine was deliberate,
Cold, calculated, the reward assured
And long enjoyed,—to be enjoyed no more!
It now had been all one had I remained
Still torpid in my drear integrity,
And never basked in the insidious South,
That undermines the conscience, where one learns
Art for Art's sake, and finds scant room for Virtue.
[A Capuchin Friar, with an Attendant, enters.
How well I know that habit! Am I, then,
In Rome once more? Could you not carry me
Under the colonnade that I may see
Alban and Sabine mountains yet again,
Fold after fold of smoothly sloping hill,
Dimpled with dingles flashing to the sea;
Bare-headed Monte Cavo's learnëd brow,
Rocca di Papa black above the woods
Where I have gathered snowdrops in the Spring,
And philosophic Tusculum? I think
That I should be more happy in my grave,
If Roman sunshine-shadow stretched athwart it.
What said you? He has come to shrive my sins.
Is then a Roman passport needed there,
Whither I travel? Oft have I confessed,
But never told the dark confessional
My sole transgression. Can you guess it, now?
What! Margherita Guazzi? Foolish Mengs,
And may-be foolish wife! But well I know,—
What I have never made men understand,—
To apprehend the glory and disdain
Of that Pure Form which dwells within the mind,
We should, like swallows, only skim the ground,
Then soar into the ether. I have loved
Chaste marble in cool corridors. If that
Be sin, it is my only one, and I
Can scarce repent of it. And now 'tis plain
I never shall commit that sin again.
If so there be another, even now
I cannot tell it you! You are very kind,
And so is the Madonna, and the Saints.
But if you'll read to me from out the book
My mother gave me when I was a boy
In the Old Mark, I think I should prefer it.
They are wrong, tell dear Albani, when they deem
'Tis Aegeus showing unto Aethra where
In Troizene are hid the shoes and sword
For Theseus to unearth, when his limp thews
Are strained to manhood. It is Theseus' self,
The huge rock rolled away; and thus he takes
Leave of his mother, bound for Attica.
When am I going thither? Ganymede!
Lift me aloft, that I may banquet where
They chant the music of Cecilia!
Beauty is everywhere!”
[He dies.
Attendant
How still he looks!

Capuchin
The homing soul goes quiet on the wing
Unto its nest in Heaven!

A SOULLESS SINGER

TO IRELAND

VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE

When Faith turns false and Fancy grows unkind,
And Fortune, more from fickleness than spite,
Takes the keen savour out of all delight,
And of sweet pulp leaves only bitter rind,
Then I the load of living leave behind,
Fleeing where, far from human sound and sight,
Over brown furrows wheels the lapwing white,
And whistles tunely with the winter wind.
For Nature's frank indifference woundeth less
Than Man's feigned smiles and simulated tears:
She is at least the egoist she appears,
Scorning to proffer or entice caress;
And, through the long reiterated years,
Endures her doom with uncomplainingness.

ANOTHER SPRING CAROL

WHO WOULD NOT DIE FOR ENGLAND!

So across the far-off foam,
Bring him hither, bring him home,
Over avenues of wave,—
English ground,—to English grave;
Where his soldier dust may rest,
England's Flag above his breast,
And, love-tended, long may bloom
English flowers about his tomb.
Who would not die for England, that can give
A sepulture like this, 'mid hamlet crofts,
And comely cottages with old-world flowers,
And rustic seats for labour-palsied limbs,
The pensioners of Peace! I linger here,
Pondering the dark inexplicable Night,
Here by this river-girt sequestered shrine
Whose vanished walls were reared anew by Him,
Of Princes the most princely, if it be
That Wisdom, Love, and Virtue more adorn
Sarcophagus of Kings than dripping spears,
Lone wailing hearths and hecatombs of slain.
And He too died for England, He who lived
Scorning all joy save that great joy of all,
The love of one true woman, She a Queen,
Empress and Queen, yet not the more revered,
Not the more loved, for those resounding names,
Than for the lowlier titles, Gracious, Good,
The Worthiest of Women ever crowned.
Sweetest Consort, sagest Prince!
Snows on snows have melted since
England lost you;—late to learn
Worth that never can return;
Learned to know you as you were,
Known, till then, alone to Her!
Luminous as sun at noon,
Tender as the midnight moon,
Steadfast as the steered-by star,
Wise as Time and Silence are:
Deaf to vain-belittling lie,
Deaf to gibing jealousy;
Thinking only of the goal,
And, like every lofty soul,
Scanning with a far-off smile
The revilings of the vile.
Yes, He too died for England! thence withdrawn
Dim to that undiscoverable land
Where our lost loved ones dwell with wistful eyes,
And lips that look but speak not. . . . But away!
Away from these soft-whispering waves that make
A dulcet dirge around the new-delved grave,
To bluff East-Anglia, where on wind-swept lawns
The sanguine crocus peeps from underground
To feel the sun and only finds the snow;
And, whinnying on the norland blast, the surge
Leaps against iron coast with iron hoof,
As though the hosts of Denmark foamed afresh,
Caparisoned for ravin! And I see
A cradle, not a coffin, and therein
Another Child to England; and, veiled Fate
Over it bent with deep-divining gaze,
And with oracular lips, like nurse inspired,
Foretelling the fair Future.
“Another Albert shalt Thou be, so known,
So known, so honoured, and His name shall stand
The sponsor to your spotlessness, until
Dawns the full day when, conscious of your soul,
Your soul, your self, and that high mission laid
On all of such begetting, you may seize
The sceptre of your will, and, thus-wise armed
Against the sirens of disloyal sense,
Like to your pure progenitor abide
In God's stern presence, and surrender never
That last prerogative of all your race,
To live and die for England!”

SORROW'S IMPORTUNITY

A REPLY TO A PESSIMIST

HOW FLORENCE RINGS HER BELLS

A DREAM OF ENGLAND

I had a dream of England. Wild and weird,
The billows ravened round her, and the wrack,
Darkening and dwindling, blotted out the track,
Then flashed on her a bolt that scorched and seared.
She, writhing in her ruin, rolled, and reared,
Then headlonged unto doom, that drove her back
To welter on the waters, blind and black,
A homeless hulk, a derelict unsteered.
Wailing I woke, and through the dawn descried,
Throned on the waves that threatened to o'erwhelm,
The England of my dream resplendent ride,
And armoured Wisdom, sovran at the helm,
Through foaming furrows of the future guide
To wider empire a majestic Realm.

JOHN EVERETT MILLAIS

A POINT OF HONOUR

A FLORILEGIUM

IN PRAISE OF ENGLAND

BURNS'S STATUE AT IRVINE

AN EXPERIMENT IN TRANSLATION

THE SILENT MUSE

A PORTRAIT

When friends grown faithless, or the fickle throng,
Withdrawing from my life the love they lent,
Breed in my heart disdainful discontent,
And sadden sunshine with a sense of wrong,
Then I, forgetting to be wise and strong,
And on my own endearment too intent,
Unto myself make musical lament,
And lullaby my pain with plaintive song.
But, when I gaze upon this face august,
Her gift, who, seated on earth's loftiest throne,
For others' weal holds half the world in trust,
Pondering on cares of Empire all alone,
I, then rebuked, remember to be just,
Think of her griefs, and quite forget my own.