A Hidden Life and Other Poems Part 27

"There, Buonarotti, stands thy statue. Take Possession of the form; inherit it; Go forth upon the earth in likeness fit; As with a trumpet-cry at morning, wake The sleeping nations; with light's terror, shake The slumber from their hearts; and, where they sit, Let them leap up aghast, as at a pit Agape beneath." I hear him answer make: "Alas! I dare not; I could not inform That image; I revered as I did trace; I will not dim the glory of its grace, Nor with a feeble spirit mock the enorm Strength on its brow." Thou cam'st, G.o.d's thought thy form, Living the large significance of thy face.

III.

Some men I have beheld with wonderment, n.o.ble in form and feature, G.o.d's design, In whom the thought must search, as in a mine, For that live soul of theirs, by which they went Thus walking on the earth. And I have bent Frequent regard on women, who gave sign That G.o.d willed Beauty, when He drew the line That shaped each float and fold of Beauty's tent; But the soul, drawing up in little s.p.a.ce, Thus left the form all staring, self-dismayed, A vacant sign of what might be the grace If mind swelled up, and filled the plan displayed: Each curve and shade of thy pure form were Thine, Thy very hair replete with the divine.

IV.

If Thou hadst been a painter, what fresh looks, What shining of pent glories, what new grace Had burst upon us from the great Earth's face!

How had we read, as in new-languaged books, Clear love of G.o.d in lone retreating nooks!

A lily, as thy hand its form would trace, Were plainly seen G.o.d's child, of lower race; And, O my heart, blue hills! and gra.s.sy brooks!

Thy soul lay to all undulations bare, Answering in waves. Each morn the sun did rise, And G.o.d's world woke beneath life-giving skies, Thou sawest clear thy Father's meanings there; 'Mid Earth's Ideal, and expressions rare, The ideal Man, with the eternal eyes.

V.

But I have looked on pictures made by man, Wherein, at first, appeared but chaos wild; So high the art transcended, it beguiled The eye as formless, and without a plan; Until the spirit, brooding o'er, began To see a purpose rise, like mountains piled, When G.o.d said: Let the dry earth, undefiled, Rise from the waves: it rose in twilight wan.

And so I fear thy pictures were too strange For us to pierce beyond their outmost look; A vapour and a darkness; a sealed book; An atmosphere too high for wings to range: At G.o.d's designs our spirits pale and change, Trembling as at a void, thought cannot brook.

VI.

And is not Earth thy living picture, where Thou utterest beauty, simple and profound, In the same form by wondrous union bound; Where one may see the first step of the stair, And not the next, for brooding vapours there?

And G.o.d is well content the starry round Should wake the infant's inarticulate sound, Or lofty song from bursting heart of prayer.

And so all men of low or lofty mind, Who in their hearts hear thy unspoken word, Have lessons low or lofty, to their kind, In these thy living shows of beauty, Lord; While the child's heart that simply childlike is, Knows that the Father's face looks full in his.

VII.

If Thou hadst been a Poet! On my heart The thought dashed. It recoiled, as, with the gift, Light-blinded, and joy-saddened, so bereft.

And the hot fountain-tears, with sudden start, Thronged to mine eyes, as if with that same smart The husk of vision had in twain been cleft, Its hidden soul in naked beauty left, And we beheld thee, Nature, as thou art.

O Poet, Poet, Poet! at thy feet I should have lien, sainted with listening; My pulses answering aye, in rhythmic beat, Each parting word that with melodious wing Moved on, creating still my being sweet; My soul thy harp, thy word the quivering string.

VIII.

Thou wouldst have led us through the twilight land Where spirit shows by form, form is refined Away to spirit by transfiguring mind, Till they are one, and in the morn we stand; Treading thy footsteps, children, hand in hand, With sense divinely growing, till, combined, We heard the music of the planets wind In harmony with billows on the strand; Till, one with Earth and all G.o.d's utterance, We hardly knew whether the sun outspake, Or a glad sunshine from our spirits brake; Whether we think, or windy leaflets dance: Alas, O Poet Leader! for this good, Thou wert G.o.d's tragedy, writ in tears and blood.

IX.

So if Thou hadst been scorned in human eyes, Too bright and near to be a glory then; If as Truth's artist, Thou hadst been to men A setter forth of strange divinities; To after times, Thou, born in midday skies, A sun, high up, out-blazing sudden, when Its light had had its centuries eight and ten To travel through the wretched void that lies 'Twixt souls and truth, hadst been a Love and Fear, Worshipped on high from Magian's mountain-crest, And all night long symbol'd by lamp-flames clear; Thy sign, a star upon thy people's breast, Where now a strange mysterious shape doth lie, That once barred out the sun in noontide sky.

X.

But as Thou earnest forth to bring the Poor, Whose hearts were nearer faith and verity, Spiritual childhood, thy philosophy,-- So taught'st the A, B, C of heavenly lore; Because Thou sat'st not, lonely evermore, With mighty thoughts informing language high; But, walking in thy poem continually, Didst utter acts, of all true forms the core; Instead of parchment, writing on the soul High thoughts and aspirations, being so Thine own ideal; Poet and Poem, lo!

One indivisible; Thou didst reach thy goal Triumphant, but with little of acclaim, Even from thine own, escaping not their blame.

XI.

The eye was shut in men; the hearing ear Dull unto deafness; nought but earthly things Had credence; and no highest art that flings A spirit radiance from it, like the spear Of the ice-pointed mountain, lifted clear In the nigh sunrise, had made skyey springs Of light in the clouds of dull imaginings: Vain were the painter or the sculptor here.

Give man the listening heart, the seeing eye; Give life; let sea-derived fountain well, Within his spirit, infant waves, to tell Of the far ocean-mysteries that lie Silent upon the horizon,--evermore Falling in voices on the human sh.o.r.e.

XII.

So highest poets, painters, owe to Thee Their being and disciples; none were there, Hadst Thou not been; Thou art the centre where The Truth did find an infinite form; and she Left not the earth again, but made it be One of her robing rooms, where she doth wear All forms of revelation. Artists bear Tapers in acolyte humility.

O Poet! Painter! soul of all! thy art Went forth in making artists. Pictures? No; But painters, who in love should ever show To earnest men glad secrets from G.o.d's heart.

So, in the desert, gra.s.s and wild flowers start, When through the sand the living waters go.

XIII.

So, as Thou wert the seed and not the flower, Having no form or comeliness, in chief Sharing thy thoughts with thine acquaintance Grief; Thou wert despised, rejected in thine hour Of loneliness and G.o.d-triumphant power.

Oh, not three days alone, glad slumber brief, That from thy travail brought Thee sweet relief, Lay'st Thou, outworn, beneath thy stony bower; But three and thirty years, a living seed, Thy body lay as in a grave indeed; A heavenly germ dropt in a desert wide; Buried in fallow soil of grief and need; 'Mid earthquake-storms of fiercest hate and pride, By woman's tears bedewed and glorified.

XIV.

All divine artists, humble, filial, Turn therefore unto Thee, the poet's sun; First-born of G.o.d's creation, only done When from Thee, centre-form, the veil did fall, And Thou, symbol of all, heart, coronal, The highest Life with n.o.blest Form made one, To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun; The living germ in this strange planet-ball, Even as thy form in mind of striving saint.

So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint, Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield, In every splendour shadowy revealed: But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint, Power falls down straightway, speechless, dim-eyed, faint.

XV.

Men may pursue the Beautiful, while they Love not the Good, the life of all the Fair; Keen-eyed for beauty, they will find it where The darkness of their eyes hath power to slay The vision of the good in beauty's ray, Though fruits the same life-giving branches bear.

So in a statue they will see the rare Beauty of thought moulded of dull crude clay, While loving joys nor prayer their souls expand.

So Thou didst mould thy thoughts in Life not Art; Teaching with human voice, and eye, and hand, That none the beauty from the truth might part: Their oneness in thy flesh we joyous hail-- The Holy of Holies' cloud-illumined veil!

XVI.

And yet I fear lest men who read these lines, Should judge of them as if they wholly spake The love I bear Thee and thy holy sake; Saying: "He doth the high name wrong who twines Earth's highest aim with Him, and thus combines Jesus and Art." But I my refuge make In what the Word said: "Man his life shall take From every word:" in Art G.o.d first designs,-- He spoke the word. And let me humbly speak My faith, that Art is nothing to the act, Lowliest, that to the Truth bears witness meek, Renownless, even unknown, but yet a fact: The glory of thy childhood and thy youth, Was not that Thou didst show, but didst the Truth.

XVII

The highest marble Sorrow vanishes Before a weeping child.[2] The one doth seem, The other is. And wherefore do we dream, But that we live? So I rejoice in this, That Thou didst cast Thyself, in all the bliss Of conscious strength, into Life's torrent stream, (Thy deeds fresh life-springs that with blessings teem) Acting, not painting rainbows o'er its hiss.

Forgive me, Lord, if in these verses lie Mean thoughts, and stains of my infirmity; Full well I know that if they were as high In holy song as prophet's ecstasy, 'Tis more to Thee than this, if I, ah me!

Speak gently to a child for love of Thee.

[Footnote 2: John Sterling.]

XVIII.