Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, GOETHE, by BAYARD TAYLOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

GOETHE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Whose voice shall so invade the spheres
Last Line: And made one talent ten!
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Fate; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von (1749-1832); Life; Poetry & Poets; Destiny


WHOSE voice shall so invade the spheres
That, ere it die, the Master hears?
Whose arm is now so strong
To fling the votive garland of a song,
That some fresh odor of a world he knew
With large enjoyment, and may yet
Not utterly forget,
Shall reach his place, and whisper whence it grew?
Dare we invoke him, that he pause
On trails divine of unimagined laws,
And bend the luminous eyes
Experience could not dim, nor Fate surprise,
On these late honors, where we fondly seem,
Him thus exalting, like him to aspire,
And reach, in our desire,
The triumph of his toil, the beauty of his dream!

II.

God moulds no second poet from the clay
Time once hath cut in marble: when, at last,
The veil is plucked away,
We see no face familiar to the Past.
New mixtures of the elements,
And fresh espousals of the soul and sense,
At first disguise
The unconjectured Genius to our eyes,
Till self-nursed faith and self-encouraged power
Win the despotic hour
That bids our doubting race accept and recognize!

III.

Ah, who shall say what cloud of disregard,
Cast by the savage ancient fame
Of some forgotten name,
Mantled the Chian bard?
He walked beside the strong, prophetic sea,
Indifferent as itself, and nobly free;
While roll of waves and rhythmic sound of oars
Along Ionian shores,
To Troy's high story chimed in undertone,
And gave his song the accent of their own!
What classic ghost severe was summoned up
To threaten Dante, when the bitter bread
Of exile on his board was spread,
The bitter wine of bounty filled his cup?
We need not ask: the unpropitious years,
The hate of Guelf, the lordly sncers
Of Della Scala's court, the Roman ban,
Were but as eddying dust
To his firm-centred trust;
For through that air without a star
Burned one unwavering beacon from afar,
That kept him his and ours, the stern, immortal man!
What courtier, stuffed with smooth, accepted lore
Of Song's patrician line,
But shrugged his velvet shoulders all the more,
And heard, with bland, indulgent face,
As who bestows a grace,
The homely phrase that Shakespeare made divine?
So, now, the dainty souls that crave
Light stepping-stones across a shallow wave,
Shrink from the deeps of Goethe's soundless song!
So, now, the weak, imperfect fire
That knows but half of passion and desire
Betrays itself, to do the Master wrong; --
Turns, dazzled by his white, uncolored glow,
And deems his sevenfold heat the wintry flash of snow!

IV.

Fate, like a grudging child,
Herself once reconciled
To power by loss, by suffering to fame;
Weighing the Poet's name
With blindness, exile, want, and aims denied;
Or let faint spirits perish in their pride;
Or gave her justice when its need had died;
But as if weary she
Of struggle crowned by victory,
Him with the largesse of her gifts she tried!
Proud beauty to the boy she gave;
A lip that bubbled song, yet lured the bee;
An eye of light, a forehead pure and free;
Strength as of streams, and grace as of the wave!
Round him the morning air
Of life she charmed, and made his pathway fair;
Lent Love her lightest chain,
That laid no bondage on the haughty brain,
And cheapened honors with a new disdain:
Kept, through the shocks of Time;
For him the haven of a peace sublime,
And let his sight forerun
The sown achievement, to the harvest won!

V.

But Fortune's darling stood unspoiled:
Caressing Love and Pleasure,
He let not go the imperishable treasure:
He thought, and sported; carolled free, and toiled
He stretched wide arms to clasp the joy of Earth
But delved in every field
Of knowledge, conquering all clear worth
Of action, that ennobles through the sense
Of wholly used intelligence:
From loftiest pinnacles, that shone revealed
In pure poetic ether, he could bend
To win the little store
Of humblest Labor's lore,
And give each face of Life the greeting of a friend!
He taught, and governed, -- knew the thankless days
Of service and dispraise;
He followed Science on her stony ways;
He turned from princely state to heed
The single nature's need,
And, through the chill of hostile years,
Never unlearned the noble shame of tears!
Faced by fulfilled Ideals, he aspired
To win the perished secret of their grace, --
To dower the earnest children of a race
Toil never tamed, nor acquisition tired,
With Freedom born of Beauty! -- and for them
His Titan soul combined
The passions of the mind,
Which blood and time so long had held apart,
Till the white blossom of the Grecian Art
The world saw shine once more, upon a Gothic stem!

VI.

His measure would we mete?
It is a sea that murmurs at our feet.
Wait, first, upon the strand:
A far shore glimmers -- "knowest thou the land?"
Whence these gay flowers that breathe beside the water?
Ask thou the Erl-King's daughter!
It is no cloud that darkens thus the shore:
Faust on his mantle passes o'er.
The water roars, the water heaves,
The trembling waves divide:
A shape of beauty, rising, cleaves
The green translucent tide.
The shape is a charm, the voice is a spell;
We yield, and dip in the gentle swell.
Then billowy arms our limbs entwine,
And, chill as the hidden heat of wine,
We meet the shock of the sturdy brine;
And we feel, beneath the surface-flow,
The tug of the powerful undertow,
That ceaselessly gathers and sweeps
To broader surges and darker deeps;
Till, faint and breathless, we can but float
Idly, and listen to many a note
From horns of the Tritons flung afar;
And see, on the watery rim,
The circling Dorides swim,
And Cypris, poised on her dove-drawn car!
Torn from the deepest caves,
Sea-blooms brighten the waves:
The breaker throws pearls on the sand,
And inlets pierce to the heart of the land,
Winding by dorf and mill,
Where the shores are green and the waters still,
And the force, but now so wild,
Mirrors the maiden and sports with the child!
Spent from the sea, we gain its brink,
With soul aroused and limbs aflame:
Half are we drawn, and half we sink,
But rise no more the same.

VII.

O meadows threaded by the silver Main!
O Saxon hills of pine,
Witch-haunted Hartz, and thou,
Deep vale of Ilmenau!
Ye knew your poet; and not only ye:
The purple Tyrrhene Sea
Not murmurs Virgil less, but him the more;
The Lar of haughty Rome
Gave the high guest a home:
He dwells with Tasso on Sorrento's shore!
The dewy wild-rose of his German lays,
Beside the classic cyclamen,
In many a Sabine glen,
Sweetens the calm Italian days.
But pass the hoary ridge of Lebanon,
To where the sacred sun
Beams on Schiraz; and lo! before the gates,
Goethe, the heir of Hafiz, waits.
Know ye the turbaned brow, the Persian guise,
The bearded lips, the deep yet laughing eyes?
A cadence strange and strong
Fills each voluptuous song,
And kindles energy from old repose;
Even as first, amid the throes
Of the unquiet West,
He breathed repose to heal the old unrest!

VIII.

Dear is the Minstrel, yet the Man is more;
But should I turn the pages of his brain,
The lighter muscle of my verse would strain
And break beneath his lore.
How charge with music powers so vast and free,
Save one be great as he?
Behold him, as ye jostle with the throng
Through narrow ways, that do your beings wrong,
Self-chosen lanes, wherein ye press
In louder Storm and Stress,
Passing the lesser bounty by
Because the greater seems too high,
And that sublimest joy forego,
To seek, aspire, and know!
Behold in him, since our strong line began,
The first full-statured man!
Dear is the Minstrel, even to hearts of prose;
But he who sets all aspiration free
Is dearer to humanity.
Still through our age the shadowy Leader goes;
Still whispers cheer, or waves his warning sign;
The man who, most of men,
Heeded the parable from lips divine,
And made one talent ten!





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