Classic and Contemporary Poetry
ODE DELIVERED ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF THE CAROLINA ART ASSOCIATION, by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: There are two worlds wherein our souls may dwell Last Line: "of my supremest immortality!'" Subject(s): Art & Artists | ||||||||
Delivered on the First Anniversary of the Carolina Art Association, Feb. 10, 1856. THERE are two worlds wherein our souls may dwell, With discord, or ethereal music fraught, One the loud mart wherein men buy and sell (Too oft the haunt of grovelling moods of Hell), The other, that immaculate realm of thought, In whose bright calm the master-workmen wrought, Where genius lives on light, And faith is lost in sight, Where crystal tides of perfect harmony swell Up to the heavens that never held a cloud, And round great altars reverent hosts are bowed, Altars upreared to love that cannot die, To beauty that forever keeps its youth, To kingly grandeur, and to virginal truth, To all things wise and pure, Whereof our God hath said, "Endure! endure! Ye are but parts of me, The hath been, and the evermore to be, Of my supremest Immortality!" We falter in the darkness and the dearth Which sordid passions and untamed desires Create about us; universal earth Groans with the burden of our sensual woes; The heart heaven gave for homage is consumed By the wild rages of unhallowed fires; The blush of that fine glory which illumed The earlier ages, hath gone out in gloom; There is no joy within us, no repose, One creed our beacon, and one god our hold, The creed, the god, of gold; The heavenward winged Instinct that aspires, Like a lost seraph with dishevelled plume, Pants humbled in the "slough of deep Despond;" The present binds us, there is no Beyond, No glorious Future to the soul content With the poor husks and garbage of this world; And are indeed the wings of worship furled Forevermore? Is no evangel blent, No sweet evangel, with the hiss and hum Of the century's wheels of progress? Science delves Down to the earth's hot vitals, and explores Realms arctic and antarctic, the strange shores Of remote seas, or with raised vision stands, All undismayed, amidst the starry lands: Man too, material man, our baser selves, She hath unmasked even to the source of being; Almost she seems a god, Deep-searching and far-seeing; And yet how oft like some wild funeral wail Which goes before the burial of our hopes, Emerging from the starry-blazoned copes Of highest firmaments, or darkest vale Of the nether earth, or from the burdened air Of chambers where this mortal frame lies bare, Probed to the core, her saddening accents come; "What! call'st thou man a seraph? nay, a clod, The veriest clod when his frail breath is spent, Man shows to us who know him; what is he? A speck! the merest dew-globe 'midst the sea Of life's infinity;" Or, "we have probed, dissected all we can, But never yet, in any mortal man, Found we the spirit! thing of time and clay, Eat, drink, enjoy thy transient insectday!" Thus Science; but while still her mocking voice Rings with a cold sharp clearness in our ears, Her beauteous sister, on whose brow the years Have left no cankering vestige of decay, Eternal Art, she of the fathomless eyes Brimming with light, half worship, half surprise, In whose right hand a branch of fadeless palms, Plucked from the depths of golden shadowed calms, Points upward to the skies, She answers in a minor, sweet and strange The while, all graces in her aspect meet, And Doubt and Fear shrink shuddering at her feet, "I bring a nobler message! Soul, rejoice! Rise with me from thy troublous toils of sense, Thy bootless struggles, born of impotence, Rise to a subtler view, a broader range Of thought and aim; Mine is a sway ideal, But still the works I prompt, alone, are real; Mine is a realm from immemorial time Begirt by deeds and purposes sublime, Whose consecration is faith's quenchless flame, Whose voices are the songs of poetsages, Whose strong foundations resting on the ages, The throes and crash of empires have not shaken, Nor any futile force of human rages. "Come! let us enter in! Behold, the portal gates stand open wide! Only, from off thy spirit shake the dust Of any thought of sin, Or sordid pride, For sacred is the kingdom of my trust, By mind, and strength, and beauty sanctified." She spake! and o'er the threshold of a sphere, A marvellous sphere, they passed; From the deep bosom of the purpling air A lambent glory broke along the vast Horizon line, whence clouds, like incense, rolled Athwart a firmamental arc of gold And sapphire; clouds not vapor-born, But clasping each the radiant seeds of morn, Which suddenly, clear zenith heights attained, Burst into light, unfolding like a flower, From out whose quivering heart a mystic shower Of splendor rained: A spell was hers to conquer time and space, For from the desert grandeur of that place A hundred temples rise, The marble poems of the bards of old, Whereon 'twere well to look with reverent eyes, Because they body noblest aspirations, Ethereal hopes, and winged imaginations, Whether to fabled Jove their walls were raised, Or on their inner altar offerings blazed To wise Athena, or, in Christian Rome Beneath St. Peter's mighty circling dome, A second Heaven, the golden censers swing, The clear-toned choirs those hymns of rapture sing, Which, on harmonious waves of gratulation, The outburst of the sense of deep salvation, Uplift the spirit where the Incarnate Word Amid the praise no ear of man hath heard, The peace no mind of man can comprehend, Awaits to welcome Time's worn wanderers home! "But look again!" Art's eager Genius cried: "Thou hast not seen the end, Scarce the beginning!" As she spake, a tide Of all the mighty masters, loved, adored, From out the shining distant spaces poured, All those who fashioned, through an inward dower, The concrete forms of beauty and of power; Whether from white Pentelic quarries brought, The voiceless stone uprose, a breathing thought, Or, from the mystic rays of rainbows drawn, And colors of the sunset and the dawn, The painter's pencil his ideal fine, Had clothed in hues divine; Or, skilled in living words Melodious as the natural voice of birds (But each a sentient thing, a meaning grand, It is not given to all to understand), The poet from the shade of breezy woods, From barren seaside solitudes, And from the pregnant quiet of his soul Outbreathed the numbers that forever roll Perennial, as the fountains of the sea, And deep almost as deep eternity! Near and yet nearer the bright concourse came, Their faces all aflame, As when of yore the quick creative thrill Did smite them into utterance, and the throng, Awed by the fiery burden of the song, Grew reverent pale and still; O! solemn and sublime Apocalypse That wresteth, from the dreary death-eclipse, The sacred presence of these marvellous men! Yonder the visible Homer moves again, Moves as he moved below, Save that his smitten vision Rekindled at the fount of fire Elysian, Burns with a subtler, grander, deeper glow; And yonder AEschylus, with "thunderous brow," Scarred by the lightning of his own creations, Wrapped in a cloud of sombre meditations, Hath seized the tragic muse, as if to her He scorned to bend an humble worshipper, But would extort her gifts; Then Shakespeare mild, Blessed with the innocent credence of a child, With a child's thoughts and fancies undefiled, And yet a Magian strong To whom the springs of terrible fears belong, Of majesty, and beauty, and delight, To the weird charm of whose infallible sight, The heart's emotions, Though turbid as the tides of darkest oceans, Shone clear as water of the woodland brooks -- He passed with wisdom throned in his looks Attempered by the genial heats of wit; While close beside him, his grand countenance lit By thoughts like those which wrought his Judgment Day, Grave Michel Angelo His massive forehead lifts, In a strange Titan fashion, unto Heaven; Next Raphael comes, with calm and starlike mien, Fresh from the beatific ecstasy, His face how beautiful, and how serene! Since God for him the awful veil had riven That shrouds Divinity, And rolled before his wondering mind and eye Visions that we should gaze on but -- to die! They passed, and thousands more passed by with them; Again Art's Genius spake: "Lo! these are they Who, through stern tribulations, Have raised to right and truth the subject nations; Lo! these are they, Who, were the whole bright concourse swept away, Their fame's last barrier, built the surge to stem Of chaos and oblivion, whelmed beneath The pitiless torrent of eternal death, Would yet bequeath to races unbegot The precepts of a faith which faileth not; Pointing, from troublous toils of time and sense, From bootless struggles born of impotence, To that fair realm of thought, In whose bright calm these masterworkmen wrought, Where crystal tides of perfect music swell Up to the heavens that never held a cloud, And round great altars worshipping hosts are bowed -- Altars upreared to love that cannot die, To beauty that forever keeps its youth, To kingly grandeur, and to virginal truth, To all things wise and pure, Whereof our God hath said: 'Endure! endure! Ye are but parts of me, The HATH BEEN, and the evermore TO BE, Of my supremest Immortality!'" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE OLD AND THE NEW MASTERS by RANDALL JARRELL TO A YOUNG ARTIST by ROBINSON JEFFERS BOATS IN A FOG by ROBINSON JEFFERS ART VS. TRADE by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON THE POET VISITS THE MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS by MARY OLIVER ON PASSION AS A LITERARY TRADITION by JOHN CIARDI A STORM IN THE DISTANCE (AMONG THE GEORGIAN HILLS) by PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE |
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