University of Virginia Library

Come in and see these marble gods of mine
Finished and fair now, fit to take their place!
The hand's achievement, if not all the heart's,
As first it flashed forth in the fever glow.
Not yet, Aspasia, has the fire of youth
Died out so wholly; I still try to dream
The hand must answer to the heart some day,
Art compass my ideal. Vain, I know,
The thought, but I must cling to it. If aught
Of life and might and majesty illume
These marble shapes, bethink you how they moved
Divine and dreadful in the artist's soul!
Not yet!—though years increase, and age, they say,
Reveals to man the measure of his might,
Restrains youth's wild ambitions, so we may
Grow perfect in the attainable, nor waste
The pith of manhood pining for the star.
But while I may I'll wrestle with my dream!
Oh, there are times I madden at the thought
Of impotence to render what I know;
Always this long laborious process, years
And pains that go to do one small thing well,
The poor and partial triumph at the best;
And all the while new visions lure in vain.
So hears the poet in his soul the sounds
Mystic, divine, and awful; on his lips
Only confused low murmuring of high things,
Not one untroubled echo of delight.
I can conceive a life let go in dreams
From sheer despair of saving what it sees.
Why are we made so—to behold at times
The heavens open, feel the giant's soul
All capable, with man's weak wearying hand
To grope and struggle in its orb confined
After the shape that glorified the dream?

Well, dreams are dreams. I had a dream one day;
I had gone up into the marble hill
To watch the quarrying, mark what blocks might be
Fair grained and flawless for this work of mine,
And it was sultry on the heights, and noon,
When great Pan sleeps aweary from the chase,
Men say, and pause is on the summer world.
There is a little deep-cut rock ravine,
Cooled with fresh water of perennial springs,
Hidden and low under the burning slopes,
Where summer through the oleanders blow
Rose-red among the shadows, and the air
Is lightly scented with the myrtle bloom;
And thither wandering as chance would, alone,
I made the thyme my pillow, and with face
Turned to Pentelikon I fell asleep,
And sleeping dreamed.

There in my dream I saw
The mighty gable of the mountain brow
Gleam all one marble surface, smoothed and fair,
Huge and refulgent in the summer sun,
Shaped like the pediment of some vast shrine
For heroes' worship; and I saw and felt,
Like a great sweep of music through my soul,
The artist's inspiration. Grandly grouped
Ranged the immortals in an awful line,
A revelation on an arc of sky.
There in the midst arose the unconceived,
The vast and ancient Ouranos, o'erbowed
To snatch the laughing Earth into his breast,
Earth, the new mother, reaching forth her arms
And straining upward her surrendered lips,
Led on by Love, the oldest of all gods,
And evermore the youngest, Love, the life
Of all things living, wedding earth to sky.
And in the wake of Ouranos, the Winds,
An eager rout of lustiness and life,
The Season's sequence, and the dance of Hours,
The maiden keepers of the gate of heaven
Kissing the rosy fingers of the Dawn—
All these sprang into being; and beyond
Upreared the fiery coursers of the sun,
Spurning the æther with immortal feet,
Mounting and mounting. So in Earth's fair train
Followed her sons the mountains, and the brood
Earth-born that haunt the forests and the rills,
And all the streams that issue from her breast—
A living ripple from the rock's white heart—
And all the rivers of the world drew on
To Ocean rising on a marble wave
Throned on the car that shakes the rooted hills
And girdles round creation. After these
Was hoary Kronos, with the shadowy eyes
Bent down with weight of ages; kneeling o'er
The form of Rhea, and for counterpart
Night sank at rest into the veiled embrace
Of Erebos, on the other side of day,—
The night of time behind the life and light,
Bounding the term of knowledge, for beyond
Where Tartaros, the dim unfathomed void,
Should be, lay Death, and on the other side
His brother Sleep, with wings about his brow,
And drooping eyes that watch across a dream.
All these I saw, each in his proper place,
Huge and immortal, as a god should stand;
And every metope showed a glorious form—
Man, in the morning of his youth and strength,
Under the gods, but not a whit less fair;
For all this meant the truce of God with man,
The miracle of life, the glory of the world.

Then a voice cried to me, ‘Arise, conform
The hand's achievement to the heart's desire!’
And I was lifted with a giant's strength,
A giant's arm against the gleaming wall
Moving about it on the wings of air;
And the white marble rained to earth like snow
Freed by the spring winds as I hacked and hewed
Shaping the thoughts that billowed through my brain.
Time I knew not, nor effort, but the hand
Answered the spirit as a ship the helm,
Till all the mountain grew instinct with life
As at my bidding. When I paused at last
The sun lay on the crags of Salamis,
And I surveyed my finished work, the glow
Gilding the marble forehead of the gods,
The realised conception. One great throb
Of gladness went up through the artist's soul,
And once on earth dreaming I was content.
Then lo, I saw how it was lifted up
On blue pilasters of the evening sky,
In the sun's face, crowned with the dawning stars,
Dwarfing mankind's achievement, vast, sublime,
Worthy of God, and worthy that ideal
God spurs man ever vainly to pursue.

When I awoke it was all twilight round;
The misted purple of the mountain-peak
Looked far ethereal, pointing to a star,
As though it yearned to reach it, and in vain;
But near it broadened to the breast of earth
With long strong arms that gathered in the plain.
The silent pathos touched me, and I found
A solace for my vanished dream; for while
The summit strained toward the unreached star,
Deep in the earth its strong foundations lay.
And so, Aspasia, will I keep my dreams
And still aspire, if vainly! but no less
Perfect this hand within its lowlier sphere,
Be strong in my own strength, and compass here
Some part maybe of things attainable
Before the twilight closes to the night.