[All poems in this section are translations by Edward, Lord Lytton, and appear by permission of George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., London.]
Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy—
Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me?
With thy joy, thy melancholy,
Wilt thou thus relentless flee?
O Golden Time, O Human May,
Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restraint?
Must thy sweet river glide away
Into the eternal Ocean Main?
The suns serene are lost and vanish'd
That wont the path of youth to gild,
And all the fair Ideals banish'd
From that wild heart they whilome fill'd.
Gone the divine and sweet believing
In dreams which Heaven itself unfurl'd!
What godlike shapes have years bereaving
Swept from this real work-day world!
As once, with tearful passion fired,
The Cyprian Sculptor clasp'd the stone,
Till the cold cheeks, delight-inspired,
Blush'd—to sweet life the marble grown:
So youth's desire for Nature!—round
The Statue so my arms I wreathed,
Till warmth and life in mine it found,
And breath that poets breathe—it breathed;
With my own burning thoughts it burn'd;—
Its silence stirr'd to speech divine;—
Its lips my glowing kiss return'd—
Its heart in beating answer'd mine!
How fair was then the flower—the tree!—
How silver-sweet the fountain's fall!
The soulless had a soul to me!
My life its own life lent to all!
The Universe of things seem'd swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering Fancy found a dwelling
In every shape, thought, deed, and sound.
Germ'd in the mystic buds, reposing,
A whole creation slumbered mute,
Alas, when from the buds unclosing,
How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!
How happy in his dreaming error,
His own gay valor for his wing,
Of not one care as yet in terror
Did Youth upon his journey spring;
Till floods of balm, through air's dominion,
Bore upward to the faintest star—
For never aught to that bright pinion
Could dwell too high, or spread too far.
Though laden with delight, how lightly
The wanderer heavenward still could soar,
And aye the ways of life how brightly
The airy Pageant danced before!
Love, showering gifts (life's sweetest) down,
Fortune, with golden garlands gay,
And Fame, with starbeams for a crown,
And Truth, whose dwelling is the Day.
Ah! midway soon lost evermore,
Afar the blithe companions stray;
In vain their faithless steps explore,
As one by one, they glide away.
Fleet Fortune was the first escaper—
The thirst for wisdom linger'd yet;
But doubts with many a gloomy vapor
The sun-shape of the Truth beset!
The holy crown which Fame was wreathing,
Behold! the mean man's temples wore,
And, but for one short spring-day breathing,
Bloom'd Love—the Beautiful—no more!
And ever stiller yet, and ever
The barren path more lonely lay,
Till scarce from waning Hope could quiver
A glance along the gloomy way.
Who, loving, lingered yet to guide me,
When all her boon companions fled,
Who stands consoling yet beside me,
And follows to the House of Dread?
Thine FRIENDSHIP—thine the hand so tender,
Thine the balm dropping on the wound,
Thy task the load more lightly to render—
O! earliest sought and soonest found!
And Thou, so pleased, with her uniting,
To charm the soul-storm into peace,
Sweet TOIL, in toil itself delighting,
That more it labored, less could cease;
Tho' but by grains thou aid'st the pile
The vast Eternity uprears,
At least thou strik'st from Time the while
Life's debt—the minutes, days and years.[3]
A youth, whom wisdom's warm desire had lured
To learn the secret lore of Egypt's priests,
To Saïs came. And soon, from step to step
Of upward mystery, swept his rapid soul!
Still ever sped the glorious Hope along,
Nor could the parch'd Impatience halt, appeased
By the calm answer of the Hierophant—
"What have I, if I have not all," he sigh'd;
"And giv'st thou but the little and the more?
Does thy truth dwindle to the gauge of gold,
A sum that man may smaller or less small
Possess and count—subtract or add to—still?
Is not TRUTH one and indivisible?
Take from the Harmony a single tone
A single tint take from the Iris bow—
And lo! what once was all, is nothing—while
Fails to the lovely whole one tint or tone!"
They stood within the temple's silent dome,
And, as the young man paused abrupt, his gaze
Upon a veil'd and giant IMAGE fell:
Amazed he turn'd unto his guide—"And what
Towers, yonder, vast beneath the veil?"
"THE TRUTH,"
Answered the Priest.
"And have I for the truth
Panted and struggled with a lonely soul,
And yon the thin and ceremonial robe
That wraps her from mine eyes?"
Replied the Priest,
"There shrouds herself the still Divinity.
Hear, and revere her best: 'Till I this veil
Lift—may no mortal-born presume to raise;
And who with guilty and unhallow'd hand
Too soon profanes the Holy and Forbidden—
He,' says the goddess."—
"Well?"
"'SHALL SEE THE TRUTH!'"
"And wond'rous oracle; and hast thou never
Lifted the veil?"
"No! nor desired to raise!"
"What! nor desired? O strange, incurious heart,
Here the thin barrier—there reveal'd the truth!"
Mildly return'd the priestly master: "Son,
More mighty than thou dream'st of, Holy Law
Spreads interwoven in yon slender web,
Air-light to touch—lead-heavy to the soul!"
The young man, thoughtful, turn'd him to his home,
And the sharp fever of the Wish to Know
Robb'd night of sleep. Around his couch he roll'd,
Till midnight hatch'd resolve—
"Unto the shrine!"
Stealthily on, the involuntary tread
Bears him—he gains the boundary, scales the wall,
And midway in the inmost, holiest dome,
Strides with adventurous step the daring man.
Now halts he where the lifeless Silence sleeps
In the embrace of mournful Solitude;—
Silence unstirr'd—save where the guilty tread
Call'd the dull echo from mysterious vaults!
High from the opening of the dome above,
Came with wan smile the silver-shining moon.
And, awful as some pale presiding god,
Dim-gleaming through the hush of that large gloom,
In its wan veil the Giant Image stood.
With an unsteady step he onward past,
Already touch'd the violating hand
The Holy—and recoil'd! a shudder thrill'd
His limbs, fire-hot and icy-cold in turns,
As if invisible arms would pluck the soul
Back from the deed.
"O miserable man!
What would'st thou?" (Thus within the inmost heart
Murmur'd the warning whisper.) "Wilt thou dare
The All-hallow'd to profane? 'No mortal-born'
(So spake the oracular word)—'may lift the veil
Till I myself shall raise!' Yet said it not—
The same oracular word—'who lifts the veil
Shall see the truth?' Behind, be what there may,
I dare the hazard—I will lift the veil—"
Loud rang his shouting voice—"and I will see!"
"SEE!"
A lengthen'd echo, mocking, shrill'd again!
He spoke and rais'd the veil! And ask'st thou what
Unto the sacrilegious gaze lay bare?
I know not—pale and senseless, stretch'd before
The statue of the great Egyptian queen,
The priests beheld him at the dawn of day;
But what he saw, or what did there befall,
His lips reveal'd not. Ever from his heart
Was fled the sweet serenity of life,
And the deep anguish dug the early grave
"Woe—woe to him"—such were his warning words,
Answering some curious and impetuous brain,
"Woe—for her face shall charm him never more!
Woe—woe to him who treads through Guilt to TRUTH!"
Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice—
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods—
With Man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seek'st thou on earth the life of Gods to share,
Safe in the Realm of Death?—beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their glow—
Short are the joys Possession can bestow,
And in Possession sweet Desire will die.
'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river—
She pluck'd the fruit of the unholy ground,
And so—was Hell's forever!
The Weavers of the Web—the Fates—but sway
The matter and the things of clay;
Safe from each change that Time to Matter gives,
Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray
With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day,
The FORM, the ARCHETYPE,[4] serenely lives.
Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast from thee, Earth, the bitter and the real,
High from this cramp'd and dungeon being, spring
Into the Realm of the Ideal!
Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray,
Free from the clogs and taints of clay,
Hovers divine the Archetypal Man!
Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam
And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,—
Fair as it stands in fields Elysian,
Ere down to Flesh the Immortal doth descend:—
If doubtful ever in the Actual life
Each contest—here a victory crowns the end
Of every nobler strife.
Not from the strife itself to set thee free,
But more to nerve—doth Victory
Wave her rich garland from the Ideal clime.
Whate'er thy wish, the Earth has no repose—
Life still must drag thee onward as it flows,
Whirling thee down the dancing surge of Time.
But when the courage sinks beneath the dull
Sense of its narrow limits—on the soul,
Bright from the hill-tops of the Beautiful,
Bursts the attainèd goal!
If worth thy while the glory and the strife
Which fire the lists of Actual Life—
The ardent rush to fortune or to fame,
In the hot field where Strength and Valor are,
And rolls the whirling thunder of the car,
And the world, breathless, eyes the glorious game—
Then dare and strive—the prize can but belong
To him whose valor o'er his tribe prevails;
In life the victory only crowns the strong—
He who is feeble fails.
But Life, whose source, by crags around it pil'd,
Chafed while confin'd, foams fierce and wild,
Glides soft and smooth when once its streams expand,
When its waves, glassing in their silver play,
Aurora blent with Hesper's milder ray,
Gain the Still BEAUTIFUL—that Shadow-Land!
Here, contest grows but interchange of Love;
All curb is but the bondage of the Grace;
Gone is each foe,—Peace folds her wings above
Her native dwelling-place.
When, through dead stone to breathe a soul of light,
With the dull matter to unite
The kindling genius, some great sculptor glows;
Behold him straining every nerve intent—
Behold how, o'er the subject element,
The stately THOUGHT its march laborious goes!
For never, save to Toil untiring, spoke
The unwilling Truth from her mysterious well—
The statue only to the chisel's stroke
Wakes from its marble cell.
But onward to the Sphere of Beauty—go
Onward, O Child of Art! and, lo,
Out of the matter which thy pains control
The Statue springs!—not as with labor wrung
From the hard block, but as from Nothing sprung—
Airy and light—the offspring of the soul!
The pangs, the cares, the weary toils it cost
Leave not a trace when once the work is done—
The Artist's human frailty merged and lost
In Art's great victory won!
If human Sin confronts the rigid law
Of perfect Truth and Virtue, awe
Seizes and saddens thee to see how far
Beyond thy reach, Perfection;—if we test
By the Ideal of the Good, the best,
How mean our efforts and our actions are!
This space between the Ideal of man's soul
And man's achievement, who hath ever past?
An ocean spreads between us and that goal
Where anchor ne'er was cast!
But fly the boundary of the Senses—live
The Ideal life free Thought can give;
And, lo, the gulf shall vanish, and the chill
Of the soul's impotent despair be gone!
And with divinity thou sharest the throne,
Let but divinity become thy will!
Scorn not the Law—permit its iron band
The sense (it cannot chain the soul) to thrall.
Let man no more the will of Jove withstand,
And Jove the bolt lets fall!
If, in the woes of Actual Human Life—
If thou could'st see the serpent strife
Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone—
Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek,
Note every pang, and hearken every shriek
Of some despairing lost Laocoon,
The human nature would thyself subdue
To share the human woe before thine eye—
Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true
To Man's great Sympathy.
But in the Ideal Realm, aloof and far,
Where the calm Art's pure dwellers are,
Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan.
Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows—
Here, suffering's self is made divine, and shows
The brave resolve of the firm soul alone:
Here, lovely as the rainbow on the dew
Of the spent thunder-cloud, to Art is given,
Gleaming through Grief's dark veil, the peaceful blue
Of the sweet Moral Heaven.
So, in the glorious parable, behold
How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old
Life's dreary path divine Alcides trod:
The hydra and the lion were his prey,
And to restore the friend he loved today,
He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God;
And all the torments and the labors sore
Wroth Juno sent—the meek majestic One,
With patient spirit and unquailing, bore,
Until the course was run—
Until the God cast down his garb of clay,
And rent in hallowing flame away
The mortal part from the divine—to soar
To the empyreal air! Behold him spring
Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing,
And the dull matter that confined before
Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream!
Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul,
And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream,
Fills for a God the bowl!
Do I believe, thou ask'st, the Master's word,
The Schoolman's shibboleth that binds the herd?
To the soul's haven is there but one chart?
Its peace a problem to be learned by art?
On system rest the happy and the good?
To base the temple must the props be wood?
Must I distrust the gentle law, imprest,
To guide and warn, by Nature on the breast,
Till, squared to rule the instinct of the soul,—
Till the School's signet stamp the eternal scroll,
Till in one mold some dogma hath confined
The ebb and flow—the light waves—of the mind?
Say thou, familiar to these depths of gloom,
Thou, safe ascended from the dusty tomb,
Thou, who hast trod these weird Egyptian cells—
Say—if Life's comfort with yon mummies dwells!—
Say—and I grope—with saddened steps indeed—
But on, thro' darkness, if to Truth it lead!
Nay, Friend, thou know'st the golden time—the age
Whose legends live in many a poet's page?
When heavenlier shapes with Man walked side by side,
And the chaste Feeling was itself a guide;
Then the great law, alike divine amid
Suns bright in Heaven, or germs in darkness hid—
That silent law—(call'd whether by the name
Of Nature or Necessity, the same),
To that deep sea, the heart, its movement gave—
Sway'd the full tide, and freshened the free wave.
Then sense unerring—because unreproved—
True as the finger on the dial moved,
Half-guide, half-playmate, of Earth's age of youth,
The sportive instinct of Eternal Truth.
Then, nor Initiate nor Profane were known;
Where the Heart felt—there Reason found a throne:
Not from the dust below, but life around
Warm Genius shaped what quick Emotion found.
One rule, like light, for every bosom glowed,
Yet hid from all the fountain whence it flowed.
But, gone that blessed Age!—our wilful pride
Has lost, with Nature, the old peaceful Guide.
Feeling, no more to raise us and rejoice,
Is heard and honored as a Godhead's voice;
And, disenhallowed in its eldest cell
The Human Heart—lies mute the Oracle,
Save where the low and mystic whispers thrill
Some listening spirit more divinely still.
There, in the chambers of the inmost heart,
There, must the Sage explore the Magian's art;
There, seek the long-lost Nature's steps to track,
Till, found once more, she gives him Wisdom back!
Hast thou—(O Blest, if so, whate'er betide!)—
Still kept the Guardian Angel by thy side?
Can thy Heart's guileless childhood yet rejoice
In the sweet instinct with its warning voice?
Does Truth yet limn upon untroubled eyes,
Pure and serene, her world of Iris-dies?
Rings clear the echo which her accent calls
Back from the breast, on which the music falls?
In the calm mind is doubt yet hush'd—and will
That doubt tomorrow, as today, be still?
Will all these fine sensations in their play,
No censor need to regulate and sway?
Fear'st thou not in the insidious Heart to find
The source of Trouble to the limpid mind?
No!—then thine Innocence thy Mentor be!
Science can teach thee naught—she learns from thee!
Each law that lends lame succor to the Weak—
The cripple's crutch—the vigorous need not seek!
From thine own self thy rule of action draw;
That which thou dost—what charms thee—is thy Law,
And founds to every race a code sublime—
What pleases Genius gives a Law to Time!
The Word—the Deed—all Ages shall command,
Pure if thy lip and holy if thy hand!
Thou, thou alone mark'st not within thy heart
The inspiring God whose Minister thou art,
Know'st not the magic of the mighty ring
Which bows the realm of Spirits to their King:
But meek, nor conscious of diviner birth,
Glide thy still footsteps thro' the conquered Earth!
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