EPIGRAMS

‘ Tis human fortune's happiest height to be

A spirit melodious, lucid, poised, and whole;

Second in order of felicity

I hold it, to have walk'd with such a soul.

The statue — Buonarroti said — doth wait,

Thrall'd in the block, for me to emancipate.

The poem — saith the poet — wanders free

Till I betray it to captivity.

To keep in sight Perfection, and adore

The vision, is the artist's best delight;

His bitterest pang, that he can ne'er do more

Than keep her long'd-for loveliness in sight.

If Nature be a phantasm, as thou say'st,

A splendid fiction and prodigious dream,

To reach the real and true I'll make no haste,

More than content with worlds that only seem.

The Poet gathers fruit from every tree,

Yea, grapes from thorns and figs from thistles he.

Pluck'd by his hand, the basest weed that grows

Towers to a lily, reddens to a rose.

Brook, from whose bridge the wandering idler peers

To watch thy small fish dart or cool floor shine,

I would that bridge whose arches all are years

Spann'd not a less transparent wave than thine!

To Art we go as to a well, athirst,

And see our shadow‘ gainst its mimic skies,

But in its depth must plunge and be immersed

To clasp the naiad Truth where low she lies.

In youth the artist voweth lover's vows

To Art, in manhood maketh her his spouse.

Well if her charms yet hold for him such joy

As when he craved some boon and she was coy!

Immured in sense, with fivefold bonds confined,

Rest we content if whispers from the stars

In waftings of the incalculable wind

Come blown at midnight through our prison-bars.

Love, like a bird, hath perch'd upon a spray

For thee and me to hearken what he sings.

Contented, he forgets to fly away;

But hush!... remind not Eros of his wings.

Think not thy wisdom can illume away

The ancient tanglement of night and day.

Enough, to acknowledge both, and both revere:

They see not clearliest who see all things clear.

In mid whirl of the dance of Time ye start,

Start at the cold touch of Eternity,

And cast your cloaks about you, and depart:

The minstrels pause not in their minstrelsy.

The beasts in field are glad, and have not wit

To know why leapt their hearts when springtime shone.

Man looks at his own bliss, considers it,

Weighs it with curious fingers; and‘ tis gone.

Momentous to himself as I to me

Hath each man been that ever woman bore;

Once, in a lightning-flash of sympathy,

I felt this truth, an instant, and no more.

The gods man makes he breaks; proclaims them each

Immortal, and himself outlives them all:

But whom he set not up he cannot reach

To shake His cloud-dark sun-bright pedestal.

The children romp within the graveyard's pale;

The lark sings o'er a madhouse, or a gaol;—

Such nice antitheses of perfect poise

Chance in her curious rhetoric employs.

Our lithe thoughts gambol close to God's abyss,

Children whose home is by the precipice.

Fear not thy little ones shall o'er it fall:

Solid, though viewless, is the girdling wall.

Lives there whom pain hath evermore pass'd by

And Sorrow shunn'd with an averted eye?

Him do thou pity, him above the rest,

Him of all hapless mortals most unbless'd.

Say what thou wilt, the young are happy never.

Give me bless'd Age, beyond the fire and fever,—

Past the delight that shatters, hope that stings,

And eager flutt'ring of life's ignorant wings.

Onward the chariot of the Untarrying moves;

Nor day divulges him nor night conceals;

Thou hear'st the echo of unreturning hooves

And thunder of irrevocable wheels.

A deft musician does the breeze become

Whenever an Æolian harp it finds:

Hornpipe and hurdygurdy both are dumb

Unto the most musicianly of winds.

I follow Beauty; of her train am I:

Beauty whose voice is earth and sea and air;

Who serveth, and her hands for all things ply;

Who reigneth, and her throne is everywhere.

Toiling and yearning,‘ tis man's doom to see

No perfect creature fashion'd of his hands.

Insulted by a flower's immaculacy,

And mock'd at by the flawless stars he stands.

For metaphors of man we search the skies,

And find our allegory in all the air.

We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes,

Enamour'd of our shadow everywhere.

One music maketh its occult abode

In all things scatter'd from great Beauty's hand;

And evermore the deepest words of God

Are yet the easiest to understand.

Enough of mournful melodies, my lute!

Be henceforth joyous, or be henceforth mute.

Song's breath is wasted when it does but fan

The smouldering infelicity of man.

I pluck'd this flower, O brighter flower, for thee,

There where the river dies into the sea.

To kiss it the wild west wind hath made free:

Kiss it thyself and give it back to me.

To be as this old elm full loth were I,

That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head.

Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lie

Ere the path rustle with my foliage shed.

Ah, vain, thrice vain in the end, thy hate and rage,

And the shrill tempest of thy clamorous page.

True poets but transcendent lovers be,

And one great love-confession poesy.

His rhymes the poet flings at all men's feet,

And whoso will may trample on his rhymes.

Should Time let die a song that's true and sweet,

The singer's loss were more than match'd by Time's.