The Arts

one showeth a pilgrim on his way to some shrine that he would visit for the teaching is only of whither and how to go, the vision itself is the work of him who hath willed

to see.

70

71

Omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara.

...

I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life. I feel escaped from a new strange and threating sorrow, and am thankful for it. There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of immortality. . . . The roaring of the wind is my wife, and the stars through the window-pane are my children. The mighty abstract Idea of Beauty stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness,

72

I AM here for thee,

Art thou there for me?

Or, traitress to my watchful heart,
Dost thou from rock and wave depart,
And from the desolate sea? ....

I am here for thee,

Art thou there for me?

Spirit of brightness, shy and sweet!
My eyes thy glimmering robe would meet
Above the glimmering sea.

73

The Muses

My little skill,

My passionate will

Are here: where art thou? Spirit, bow
From darkening cloud thy heavenly brow,
Ere sinks the ebbing sea.

PANTHEA

Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,
Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air!

IONE

And see! more come,

Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scatter'd lines.
And hark! is it the music of the pines?
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?

PANTHEA

Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS

From unremember'd ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality:
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought ;-
Be it dim and dank and grey
Like a storm-extinguish'd day,
Travel'd o'er by dying gleams;
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,

Silent, liquid, and serene ;

As the birds within the wind,

As the fish within the wave,

As the thoughts of man's own mind

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75

Float thro' all above the grave;
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element. . .

Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame,
Or on blind Homer's heart a wingèd thought . .

76

ORPHEUS with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art;
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.

Such sweet compulsion doth in musick lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteddy Nature to her law,
And the low world in measur'd motion draw,
After the heavenly tune, which none can hear
Of human mould with grosse unpurged ear, . .

77

78

I PANT for the music which is divine,
My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;
Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,
Loosen the notes in a silver shower;
Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,
I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.

Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,
More, oh more,-I am thirsting yet;

It loosens the serpent which care has bound
Upon my heart to stifle it;

The dissolving strain, through every vein,
Passes into my heart and brain. . .

.. And ever, against eating cares,
Lap me in soft Lydian Aires,
Married to immortal verse

Such as the meeting soul may pierce
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.

79

.. The Shepherds on the Lawn,
Or ere the point of dawn,

80

Sat simply chatting in a rustick row;
Full little thought they than

That the mighty Pan

Was kindly com to live with them below:
Perhaps their loves, or els their sheep,

Was all that did their silly thoughts so busie keep.

When such musick sweet

Their hearts and ears did greet,
As never was by mortal finger strook.
Divinely-warbled voice

Answering the stringed noise,

As all their souls in blisfull rapture took :
The air, such pleasure loth to lose,

With thousand echoes still prolongs each heav'nly close...

Such Musick (as 'tis said)

Before was never made,

But when of old the sons of morning sung,

While the Creator Great

His constellations set,

And the well-balanc't world on hinges hung,

And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy

channel keep...

IF music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour. Enough; no more.
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.