Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Could we but see the Future ere it comes,
As gods must see effects in causes hid,—
How calmly could we wait till we were bid!
Heroes would hear their triumph's far-off drums,
Would see Fame's splendours ere the threads and thrums
Had formed them in to-morrow's living loom;
Would feel the honours round the future tomb,
Across the sunless fosse where life succumbs.

If it were so! But wiser fates conspire
That each shall bear his own lamp through the night,
Showing but short way round its blood-red light,
And find, by it alone, the herb that springs
Fast by the wells of fathomless desire;
And of this healing herb the poet sings.

180

WORDSWORTH.

[_]

(ON READING THE MEMOIRS BY DR. C. WORDSWORTH.)

I

Too much of ‘Tours,’ productive more or less;
Too much of ‘Nature,’ meaning thereby hills,
Trees, hedges, landscapes rich with woods and rills;
Too little of the dark divine recess
Beneath the white shirt,—nothing of the press
Of our own age so full of glorious cares,
And men that call, new lamps for old! good wares
For potsherds given! in this book I confess.

Yet through it evermore appears in sight
A poet travelling homeward who was still
A poet every day, with common tread
Who walked on common shoes up Life's high hill
Self-center'd, God-directed, till the light
Of this world and the next met round his head.

181

II

Cumberland was the world to him and art
Was landscape-gardening. Most sententiously
A truism or a common-place could he
Announce, and by his grave large voice impart
Value thereto. Steered by the simplest heart
'Tis said he never doubted, but held on
Bible o'erpowered: in these our days alone
Of all sane men perhaps in learning's mart!

But he of all men planned his life with care:
Fast by the wells of sadness walked he on
O'er fortunate meads with chilly flowers made fair,
Till on his right hand and his left were won
The waving wheatears of a just success;
A man whose praise rejoice we to express!

182

III

Each medal hath its reverse; every day
Its cloud; each house its skeleton; so here,
Sum up this philosophic poet's year,
And we shall find within his mental way,
Few threads of vital poet-wisdom stray.
Instead; philanthropy with hand withheld,
A caution selfward turned, the muse compell'd
To chew the cud, to sift the sand and clay
Left by chance hill-winds, lest some grains of gold
Without assiduous sieve might there be lost.
A bald soul awkward with his lyre, both cold
And over-anxious, find we to our cost:
And this the moral of the whole; that man
Is great who simply doth the best he can.

183

TO THE ARTISTS CALLED P. R. B.

(1851.)

I thank you, brethren in Sincerity,—
One who, within the temperate climes of Art,
From the charmed circle humbly stands apart,
Scornfully also, with a listless eye
Watching old marionettes' vitality;
For you have shown, with youth's brave confidence,
The honesty of true speech and the sense
Uniting life with ‘nature,’ earth with sky.

In faithful hearts Art strikes its roots far down,
And bears both flower and fruit with seeded core;
When Truth dies out, the fruit appears no more,
But the flower hides a worm within its crown.
God-speed you onward! once again our way
Shall be made odorous with fresh flowers of May.

184

ON CERTAIN CRITICS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CENTURY.

The poet lives indeed. Within the schools
He may or may not have tried on his arms,
Or learnt their dext'rous use: but free of harms
He must have dived and braved the whirling pools
Of his own heart, and o'er the heads of fools
And unbelievers, teachers, priests, tipstaves,
Or censors, held his own, breasting the waves
Of martyrdom, smiling like one who rules.

And here's the poet's judge! whose learned speech
Of tropes and classics, fixed authorities,
Smells stale, whose outside confidences teach
His fellow-philistines to dogmatise,
Till vulgar scoffers even invade the skies—
Turn, poet! lift thy foot against his breech.

185

THE EPITAPH OF HUBERT VAN EYCK.

[_]

(CARVED ON THE SHIELD HELD BY A MARBLE SKELETON, CATHEDRAL OF ST. BAVON, GHENT.)

Whoe'er thou art who walkest overhead,
Behold thyself in stone: for I yestreen
Was seemly and alert like thee: now dead,
Nailed up and earthed, and for the last decay,
The first spring greenness and the last decay,
Am hidden here for ever from the day.
I, Hubert Van Eyck, whom all Bruges hailed
Worthy of lauds, am now with worms engrailed.
My soul with many pangs by God constrained
Fled in September when the corn is wained,
Just fourteen hundred years and twenty-six
Since Christ Himself was our first crucifix.
Lovers of Art, pray for me that I gain
God's grace, nor find I've worked and lived in vain.

186

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET BY RAPHAEL.

[_]

(FOUND WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF A SKETCH.)

‘As Paul when he descended from his trance
Could utter nought of the divine arcane,—
So hidden in my heart my joys remain
Lovingly veiled from all unhallowèd chance.
How much I see, how much I do and bear,
Clothing with placid smile the secret pain,
Which I could just as easy change the hair
Upon this brow as render up profane—

Thus far the master, the divine Raphael,
Who died before his brown locks had uncurled,
And left so much,—yet from whose hand we hail
This fragment now across a changing world.
Finish it, reader!—genius, fortune, fame!
Thrice crowned, love's tangled skein remains the same.

187

THE MUSICIAN.

His sense transcends this world: the Muses' heaven
Is where his soul was born, a wondrous child;
Instinct above the intellect is given
To the Musician; wordless, unlearned, wild,
Fancies of heart are his realities,
And over us as o'er base things he flies
Towards absorption in the harmonies
Of spheres unknown. Alas, within the maze
Of the actual world, hills, cattle, ships, and town,
Knowledge accumulative, mace and gown,
Wealth, science, law, he like a blind man strays!
Yet, wondrous child, be nevermore cast down,
Men hear thy fiddle-bow, and lose their pains,—
Compared to thee they are but serfs in chains.

188

TO MY BROTHER

[_]

ON PUBLISHING HIS ‘MEMOIR, ETC.’

My brother, latest of so many, passed
Across the unknown dark sea, where we all
Must follow, as our days and hours are cast:
I speak to thee, I touch the dreadful pall,
To lay thine own bay-leaves upon thy bier.
It may be in the arcane truths of God,
Thou still dost feel this touch, dost feel and hear,
And recognizest still the cold green sod,
Immensely far yet infinitely near!
Thou who hast shown how much the steadfast soul
Bears abnegation, how an ideal goal
Robs life, how singleness of heart hopes long,
And how, by suffering sanctified, the song
From the inner shrine becomes more just and strong.

189

SANDRART'S INSCRIPTION,

ON ALBERT DÜRER'S GRAVE, NÜRNBERG.

Rest here, thou Prince of Painters, thou who wast better than great,
In many arts unequalled in the old time or the late.
Earth thou didst paint and garnish, and now, in thy new abode,
Thou paintest the holy things overhead in the city of God.
And we, as our patron saint, look up to thee ever will,
And crown, with a laurel crown, the dust left here with us still.