The Poetical Works of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bart. M.P Part 104

The few the cake amongst them carve, And labourers sweat and poets starve; And Envy still on Genius feeds, And not one modest man succeeds.

All much the same for prince and peasant-- I've done.--How dost thou love the PRESENT?

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

'Tis not man's Present or man's Past; _Beyond_, man's friend his eye must cast.

Must see him break each galling fetter; To gain the best, desire the better-- From Discontent itself we borrow The glorious yearnings for the morrow; Science and Truth like waves advance Upon the antique Ignorance.

THE MISANTHROPE.

Like waves--the image not amiss!

They gain on that side--lose on this; Pleased, after fifty ages, if They gulp at last an inch of cliff.

THE PHILANTHROPIST.

You really cannot think by satire, To mine the truths you cannot batter; Man's destinies are brightening slowly, With them entwined each thought most holy.

What though the PAST my horror moves, No Eden though the PRESENT seems, Who loves Mankind, their FUTURE loves, And trusts, and lives--

THE MISANTHROPE.

In dreams!

WISDOM.

In both extremes there seems convey'd, A truth to own, and yet deny; But what between the extremes has made The master-difference?

HOPE.

I!-- What wert thou, Wisdom, but for me?

Though thou the Past, the Present see, Through ME alone, the eye can mark The _Future_ dawning on the dark.

I plant the tree, and till the soil; I show the fruit,--where thou the toil; Where thou despondest, I aspire-- Thine sad Content, mine bright Desire.

Under my earthlier name of HOPE, The love to things unborn is given, But call me FAITH--behold I ope The flaming gates of Heaven!

Take ME from Man, and Man is both The Dastard and the Slave; And Love is l.u.s.t, and Peace a sloth, And all the Earth a Grave!

THE IDEAL WORLD.

ARGUMENT.

SECTION I.

The Ideal World--Its realm is everywhere around us--Its inhabitants are the immortal personifications of all beautiful thoughts--To that World we attain by the repose of the senses.

SECTION II.

Our dreams belong to the Ideal--The diviner love for which youth sighs, not attainable in life--But the pursuit of that love, beyond the world of the senses, purifies the soul, and awakes the Genius--Instances in Petrarch--Dante.

SECTION III.

Genius, lifting its life to the Ideal becomes itself a pure idea--It must comprehend all existence: all human sins and sufferings--But, in comprehending, it trans.m.u.tes them--The Poet in his twofold being--The actual and the ideal--The influence of Genius over the sternest realities of earth--Over our pa.s.sions--wars and superst.i.tions--Its ident.i.ty is with human progress--Its agency, even where unacknowledged, is universal.

SECTION IV.

Forgiveness to the errors of our benefactors.

SECTION V.

The Ideal is not confined to Poets--Algernon Sydney recognizes his Ideal in liberty, and believes in its triumph where the mere practical man could behold but its ruins--Yet liberty in this world must ever be an Ideal, and the land that it promises can be found but in death.

SECTION VI.

Yet all have two escapes into the Ideal World; viz. Memory and Hope--Example of Hope in youth, however excluded from action and desire--Napoleon's son.

SECTION VII.

Example of Memory as leading to the Ideal--Amidst life, however humble, and in a mind however ignorant--the village widow.

SECTION VIII.

Hence in Hope, Memory, and Prayer, all of us are Poets.

I.

Around "this visible diurnal sphere,"

There floats a world that girds us like the s.p.a.ce; On wandering clouds and gliding beams career Its ever-moving, murmurous Populace.

There, all the lovelier thoughts conceived below, Ascending live, and in celestial shapes.

To that bright World, O Mortal, wouldst thou go?-- Bind but thy senses, and thy soul escapes: To care, to sin, to pa.s.sion close thine eyes; Sleep in the flesh, and see the Dreamland rise!

Hark, to the gush of golden waterfalls, Or knightly tromps at Archimagian walls!

In the green hush of Dorian Valleys mark The River Maid her amber tresses knitting:-- When glow-worms twinkle under coverts dark, And silver clouds o'er summer stars are flitting, With jocund elves invade "the Moone's sphere, Or hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear;"[N]

Or, list! what time the roseate urns of dawn Scatter fresh dews, and the first skylark weaves Joy into song--the blithe Arcadian Faun Piping to wood-nymphs under Bromian leaves, While, slowly gleaming through the purple glade, Come Evian's panther car, and the pale Naxian Maid.

Such, O Ideal World, thy habitants!

All the fair children of creative creeds-- All the lost tribes of Phantasy are thine-- From antique Saturn in Dodonian haunts, Or Pan's first music waked from shepherd reeds, To the last sprite when heaven's pale lamps decline, Heard wailing soft along the solemn Rhine.

II.

Thine are the Dreams that pa.s.s the Ivory Gates, With prophet shadows haunting poet eyes!

Thine the beloved illusions youth creates From the dim haze of its own happy skies.

In vain we pine--we yearn on earth to win The being of the heart, our boyhood's dream.

The Psyche and the Eros ne'er have been, Save in Olympus, wedded!--As a stream Gla.s.ses a star, so life the ideal love; Restless the stream below--serene the orb above!

Ever the soul the senses shall deceive; Here custom chill, there kinder fate bereave: For mortal lips unmeet eternal vows!

And Eden-flowers for Adam's mournful brows!

We seek to make the moment's angel-guest The household dweller at a human hearth; We chase the bird of Paradise, whose nest Was never found amid the bowers of earth.[O]

Yet loftier joys the vain pursuit may bring, Than sate the senses with the boons of time; The bird of Heaven hath still an upward wing, The steps it lures are still the steps that climb, And in the ascent, although the soil be bare, More clear the daylight and more pure the air.

Let Petrarch's heart the human mistress lose, He mourns the Laura, but to win the Muse: Could all the charms which Georgian maids combine Delight the soul of the dark Florentine, Like one chaste dream of childlike Beatrice Awaiting h.e.l.l's stern pilgrim in the skies, s.n.a.t.c.h'd from below to be the guide above, And clothe Religion in the form of Love?[P]