MAZARIN.

Serene the Marble Images

Gleam'd down, in lengthen'd rows;

Their life, like the Uranides,

A glory and repose.

Glow'd forth the costly canvas spoil

From many a gorgeous frame;

One race will starve the living toil,

The next will gild the name.

That stately silence silvering through,

The steadfast tapers shone

Upon the Painter's pomp of hue,

The Sculptor's solemn stone.

Saved from the deluge-storm of Time,

Within that ark, survey

Whate'er of elder Art sublime

Survives a world's decay!

There creeps a foot, there sighs a breath,

Along the quiet floor;

An old man leaves his bed of death

To count his treasures o'er.

Behold the dying mortal glide

Amidst the eternal Art;

It were a sight to stir with pride

Some pining Painter's heart!

It were a sight that might beguile

Sad Genius from the Hour,

To see the life of Genius smile

Upon the death of Power.

The ghost-like master of that hall

Is king-like in the land;

And France's proudest heads could fall

Beneath that spectre hand.

Veil'd in the Roman purple, preys

The canker-worm within;

And more than Bourbon's sceptre sways

The crook of Mazarin.

Italian, yet more dear to thee

Than sceptre, or than crook,

The Art in which thine Italy

Still charm'd thy glazing look!

So feebly, and with wistful eyes,

He crawls along the floor;

A dying man, who, ere he dies,

Would count his treasures o'er.

And, from the landscape's soft repose,

Smiled thy calm soul, Lorraine;

And, from the deeps of Raphael, rose

Celestial Love again.

In pomp, which his own pomp recalls,

The haggard owner sees

Thy cloth of gold and banquet halls,

Thou stately Veronese!

While, cold as if they scorn'd to hail

Creations not their own,

The Gods of Greece stand marble-pale

Around the Thunderer's throne.

There, Hebe brims the urn of gold;

There, Hermes treads the skies;

There, ever in the Serpent's fold,

Laocoon deathless dies.

There, startled from her mountain rest,

Young Dian turns to draw

The arrowy death that waits the breast

Her slumber fail'd to awe.

There, earth subdued by dauntless deeds,

And life's large labours done,

Stands, sad as Worth with mortal meeds,

Alcmena's mournful son.

They gaze upon the fading form

With mute immortal eyes;—

Here, clay that waits the hungry worm;

There, children of the skies.

Then slowly as he totter'd by,

The old Man, unresign'd,

Sigh'd forth: “Alas! and must I die,

And leave such life behind?

“The Beautiful, from which I part,

Alone defies decay!”

Still, while he sigh'd, the eternal Art

Smiled down upon the clay.

And as he waved the feeble hand,

And crawl'd unto the porch,

He saw the Silent Genius stand

With the extinguish'd torch!

The world without, for ever yours,

Ye stern remorseless Three;

What, from that changeful world, secures

Calm Immortality?

Nay, soon or late decays, alas!

Or canvass, stone, or scroll;

From all material forms must pass

To forms afresh, the soul.

‘ Tis but in that which doth create,

Duration can be sought;

A worm can waste the canvass;— Fate

Ne'er swept from Time, a Thought.

Lives Phidias in his works alone?—

His Jove returns to air:

But wake one godlike shape from stone,

And Phidian thought is there!

Blot out the Iliad from the earth,

Still Homer's thought would fire

Each deed that boasts sublimer worth,

And each diviner lyre.

Like light, connecting star to star,

Doth Thought transmitted run;—

Rays that to earth the nearest are,

Have longest left the sun.