The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Volume I Part 26

By grace of G.o.d: his face is stern As one compelled, in spite of scorn, To teach a truth he would not learn.

And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed; Once counted greater than the rest, When mountain-winds blew out his vest.

And Spenser drooped his dreaming head (With languid sleep-smile you had said From his own verse engendered)

On Ariosto's, till they ran Their curls in one: the Italian Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

From his fine lids. And Dante stern And sweet, whose spirit was an urn For wine and milk poured out in turn.

Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed Boiardo, who with laughter filled The pauses of the jostled s.h.i.+eld.

And Berni, with a hand stretched out To sleek that storm. And, not without The wreath he died in and the doubt

He died by, Ta.s.so, bard and lover, Whose visions were too thin to cover The face of a false woman over.

And soft Racine; and grave Corneille, The orator of rhymes, whose wail Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,

From whose brain-lighted heart were thrown A thousand thoughts beneath the sun, Each lucid with the name of One.

And Camoens, with that look he had, Compelling India's Genius sad From the wave through the Lusiad,--

The murmurs of the storm-cape ocean Indrawn in vibrative emotion Along the verse. And, while devotion

In his wild eyes fantastic shone Under the tonsure blown upon By airs celestial, Calderon.

And bold De Vega, who breathed quick Verse after verse, till death's old trick Put pause to life and rhetoric.

And Goethe, with that reaching eye His soul reached out from, far and high, And fell from inner ent.i.ty.

And Schiller, with heroic front Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't, Too large for wreath of modern wont.

And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine; That mark upon his lip is wine.

Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim: The shapes of suns and stars did swim Like clouds from them, and granted him

G.o.d for sole vision. Cowley, there, Whose active fancy debonair Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.

Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew From outward nature, still kept new From their own inward nature true.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

And Burns, with pungent pa.s.sionings Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

And Sh.e.l.ley, in his white ideal, All statue-blind. And Keats the real Adonis with the hymeneal

Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.

And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave And salt as life; forlornly brave, And quivering with the dart he drave.

And visionary Coleridge, who Did sweep his thoughts as angels do Their wings with cadence up the Blue.

These poets faced (and many more) The lighted altar looming o'er The clouds of incense dim and h.o.a.r:

And all their faces, in the lull Of natural things, looked wonderful With life and death and deathless rule.

All, still as stone and yet intense; As if by spirit's vehemence That stone were carved and not by sense.

But where the heart of each should beat, There seemed a wound instead of it, From whence the blood dropped to their feet

Drop after drop--dropped heavily As century follows century Into the deep eternity.

Then said the lady--and her word Came distant, as wide waves were stirred Between her and the ear that heard,--

"_World's use_ is cold, _world's love_ is vain, _World's cruelty_ is bitter bane, But pain is not the fruit of pain.

"Hearken, O poet, whom I led From the dark wood: dismissing dread, Now hear this angel in my stead.

"His organ's clavier strikes along These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong, They gave him without count of wrong,--

"A diapason whence to guide Up to G.o.d's feet, from these who died, An anthem fully glorified--

"Whereat G.o.d's blessing, IBARAK (=yivarech=) Breathes back this music, folds it back About the earth in vapoury rack,

"And men walk in it, crying 'Lo The world is wider, and we know The very heavens look brighter so:

"'The stars move statelier round the edge Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge Their light for n.o.bler privilege:

"'No little flower but joys or grieves, Full life is rustling in the sheaves, Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves.'

"So works this music on the earth, G.o.d so admits it, sends it forth To add another worth to worth--

"A new creation-bloom that rounds The old creation and expounds His Beautiful in tuneful sounds.

"Now hearken!" Then the poet gazed Upon the angel glorious-faced Whose hand, majestically raised,

Floated across the organ-keys, Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas, With no touch but with influences:

Then rose and fell (with swell and swound Of shapeless noises wandering round A concord which at last they found)

Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed, Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt The incomplete and the unfixed:

And therein mighty minds were heard In mighty musings, inly stirred, And struggling outward for a word:

Until these surges, having run This way and that, gave out as one An Aphrodite of sweet tune,

A Harmony that, finding vent, Upward in grand ascension went, Winged to a heavenly argument,

Up, upward like a saint who strips The shroud back from his eyes and lips, And rises in apocalypse: