Life and Phantasy :: :: University of Virginia Library

What is the Artist's duty?
His work, however wrought,
Shape, colour, word, or tone,
Is to make better known
(Himself divinely taught),
To praise and celebrate,
Because his love is great,
The lovely miracle
Of Universal Beauty.
This message would he tell.

Amid the day's crude strife,
This message is his trust;
With all his heart and soul,
With all his skill and strength,
Seeking to add at length,
Because he may and must,
Some atom to the whole
Of man's inheritance;
Some fineness to the glance,
Some richness to the life.

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And if he deal, perforce,
With evil and with pain,
With horror and affright,
He does it to our gain;
Makes felt the mighty course,
That sweepeth on amain,
Planet-like, smooth, severe,
Of law—whose atmosphere
Is beauty and delight;
For these are at its source.

His own work, be it small,
Itself hath rounded well,
Even like Earth's own ball
Wrapt in its airy shell.
His gentle magic brings
The mystery of things;
It gives dead substance wings;
It shows in little, much;
And, by an artful touch,
Conveys the hint of all.

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[When I was young and fresh and gay]

When I was young and fresh and gay,
Full moody oft I went;
The troubles of the passing day
So wrought me discontent;

Those flaws and fallings-short in life
Which every one must bear,
Oppressions, hints to rebel strife,
Enormous wrongs they were;

Whatever man could have or be,
Nay, every fancied boon,
Belong'd, I thought, as much to me
As share of sun and moon!

Whom Eden could not satisfy
Is grateful for a flow'r;
Who wanted earth and sea and sky
Loves most a quiet hour;

To run safe through this earthly lease,
Be kindly with one's kind,
Enjoy a little, part in peace,
Were rare good luck, I find.

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THE GENERAL CHORUS.

We all keep step to the marching chorus,
Rising from millions of men around.
Millions have march'd to the same before us,
Millions come on, with a sea-like sound.
Life, Death; Life, Death;
Such is the song of human breath.

What is this multitudinous chorus,
Wild, monotonous, low, and loud?
Earth we tread on, Heaven that's o'er us?
I in the midst of the moving crowd?
Life, Death; Life, Death;
What is this burden of human breath?

On with the rest, your footsteps timing!
Mystical music flows in the song,
(Blent with it?—Born from it?)—loftily chiming,
Tenderly soothing, it bears you along.
Life, Death; Life, Death;
Strange is the chant of human breath!

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CIVITAS DEI.

I.

The roads are long and rough, with many a bend,
But always tend
To that Eternal City, and the home
Of all our footsteps, let them haste or creep.
That city is not Rome.
Great Rome is but a heap
Of shards and splinters lying in a field;
Where children of to-day
Among the fragments play,
And for themselves in turn new cities build.

II.

That city's gates and towers,
Superber than the sunset's cloudy crags,
Know nothing of the earth's all-famous flags;
It hath its own wide region, its own air.
Our kings, our lords, our mighty warriors,
Are not known there.
The wily pen, the cannon's fierce report,
Fall very short.

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III.

Where is it? . . . Tell who can.
Ask all the best geographers' advice.
Is't builded in some valley of Japan,
Or secret Africa? or isle unfound?
Or in a region calm and warm
Enclosed from every storm
Within the magical and monstrous bound
Of polar ice?

IV.

Where is it? . . . Who can tell?
Yet surely know,
Whatever land or city you may claim,
From otherwhere you came,
Elsewhither you must go;
Ev'n to a City with foundations low
As Hell,
With battlements Heav'n-high;
Which is eternal; and its place and name
Are mystery.

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[I know not if it may be mine]

I know not if it may be mine
To add a song, nay, half a line,
To that fair treasure-house of wit,
That more than cedarn cabinet,
Where men preserve their precious things,
Free wealth, surpassing every king's.
I only know, I felt and wrote
According to the day and hour,
According to my little power;
Unskill'd to break and weigh and measure
The World's materials—as it seem'd
Lovely, I loved it, worshipp'd, dream'd,
And sung, for sadness or for pleasure.
If souls unborn shall take some note
Or none at all, 'tis their affair;
I cannot guess, and will not care;
Yet hoping still that something done
Has so much life from earth and sun,
Drawn through man's finer brain, as may
In mystic form, with mystic force,
Reach forward from a fleeting day,
But a profound perennial source,
To touch upon his earthly way
Some brother pilgrim-soul, and say
(A whisper in the wayside grass)—
“I have gone by, where now you pass;
Been sorely tried with frost and heat,
With stones that bruise the weary feet,
With crag and quag, with fire and flood,
With desert sands that parch the blood;
Nor fail'd to find a flowery dell,
A shady grove, a crystal well:
And I am gone, thou know'st not whither.
—Thou thyself art hastening thither.
Thou hast thy life; and nothing can
Have more. Farewell, O Brother Man!”