Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PICTURE OF ST. JOHN: BOOK 4. THE PICTURE, by BAYARD TAYLOR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PICTURE OF ST. JOHN: BOOK 4. THE PICTURE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: As when a traveller, whose journey lies
Last Line: And love with bliss, and life with wiser youth!
Alternate Author Name(s): Taylor, James Bayard
Subject(s): Death; Life; Portraits; Time; Travel; Dead, The; Journeys; Trips


I.

As when a traveller, whose journey lies
In some still valley, slowly wanders on
By brook and meadow, cottage, bower, and lawn, --
Familiar sights, that charm his level eyes
For many a league, until, with late surprise
He starts to find those gentle regions gone,
And through the narrowing dell, whose crags enclose
His path, irresolutely, sadly goes:

II.

For what may wait beyond, he cannot guess,
A garden or a desert, -- in such wise
I went, in ignorance that mocked the guise
Of hope, and filled me with obscure distress.
Locked in a pass of doubt, whose cliffs concealed
The coming life, the temper of the skies,
I craved the certain day, that soon should rise
Upon a fortunate or fatal field!

III.

The House of Life hath many chambers. He
Who deems his mansion built, a dreamer vain,
A tottering shell inhabits, and shall see
The ruthless years hurl down his masonry;
While they who plan but as they slowly gain,
Where that which was gives that which is to be
Its form and symbols, build the house divine, --
In life a temple, and in death a shrine!

IV.

And following as the guiding vision led,
With briefest rest, with never-faltering feet,
By highways white, through field or chattering street
Or windy gorges of the hills I sped,
And crossed the level floors of silk and wine,
The slow canals, and, shrunken in their bed,
The sandy rivers, till the welcome line
Before me rose of Tuscan Apennine.

V.

The southern slopes, with shout and festal song,
Rejoiced in vintage: as I wandered by,
Came faun-like figures, purple to the thigh
From foaming vats, and laughing women, strong
To bear their Bacchic loads: then, towards the town
Through blended toil and revel hastening down,
I saw the terrace -- saw, and checked a cry, --
Whence Clelia flung to me the jasmine crown!

VI.

Alas! how changed from him that wreath who wore, --
The youth all rapture, hope and sense uncloyed,
New-landed on the world's illumined shore, --
Walked now the man! My downward path before
There sprang no arch of triumph from the void:
No censers burned: not as a conqueror
I entered Florence, -- no! a slave, that fed
On one last fragment of the feast I spread.

VII.

There stretched the garden-wall: the yellow sun
Above it burnished every cypress spire,
Tipped the tall laurel-clumps with points of fire,
And smote the palace-marbles till they won
The golden gleam of ages. Yet, above
That mellow splendor stood the beauty flown
Of midnights, when around it blew and shone
The breeze of Passion and the moon of Love!

VIII.

At last -- the door! With trembling touch I tried
The latch: it shook: the rusty bolts gave way.
As in a dream the roses I espied,
Heard as in dreams the fountain's lulling play.
There curled the dolphins in the shining shower
And rode the Triton boys: on either side
The turf was diapered with many a flower, --
And darkling drooped our green betrothal bower.

IX.

Scarce had I entered, when there came a sound
Of voices from the pillared portico, --
And twofold burst a cry, as Angelo,
Across the paths, with wildly-joyous bound
Sprang to my bosom: while, as one astound
With sense of some unexpiated wrong,
The nurse entreated: "Bid thy father go!"
But "Stay!" he cried: "where hast thou been so long?"

X.

"Stay, father! thou shalt paint me as thou wilt,
Each morning, in the silent northern hall;
But when, so tired, thou seest mine eyelids fall,
Then shall I take my sword with golden hilt,
And call the grooms, and bid them saddle straight
For us the two white horses in the stall --"
Here shrieked the nurse, with face of evil fate,
"Go, Signor, go! -- ah, God! too late -- too late!"

XI

His haste dividing, him to clasp I knelt
'Twixt porch and fountain, blind with tearful joy
As on my breast his beating heart I felt,
And on my mouth the kisses of the boy,
Wherein his mother's plantom kisses poured
A stream of ancient rapture, love restore, --
When, like the lightning ere the stroke is dealt,
Before me flashed the old Marchese's sword!

XII.

So haggard, sunken-eyed, convulsed with wrath
That paints a devil on the face of age,
He glared, that, quick to shield my child from scath, --
To fly the menace of unreasoning rage, --
I caught him in my cloak, and dashed apart
The tangled roses of the garden-path:
Pandolfo -- hate such fatal swiftness hath --
Leapt in advance, and thrust to pierce my heart!

XIII.

I saw the flame-like sparkle of the blade:
Heard, sharp and shrill, the nurse's fearful cry:
Warm blood gushed o'er my hands: a fluttering sigh
Came from the childish lips, that feebly made
These words, as prompted by the darkening eye,
"Good-night, my father!" And I knew not why
My boy should sleep, so suddenly and so well, --
But trembling seized me: clasping him, I fell.

XIV.

Nor loosed my hold, although I dimly knew
Pandolfo's hand let fall the blade accurst,
And he, his race's hoary murderer, burst
The awful stillness that around us grew
With miserable groans: his prostrate head
Touched mine, as helpless, o'er the fading dead, --
His hands met mine, and both as gently nursed
The limbs, and strove to stay the warmth that fled.

XV.

His Past, my Future, in the body met, --
His wrongs, my hopes, -- the selfsame fatal blow
Dashed into darkness: blood Lethean wet
My blighted summer, his autumnal snow,
And all of Life did either life forget,
Except the piteous death between us: so,
Together pressed, involved in half-embrace,
We hung above the cold, angelic face.

XVI.

"Her father, why should Heaven direct thy hand
Against her child, thy blood, chastising thee?"
"I loved the boy" -- "But couldst not pardon me,
His father?" "Nay, but thou thyself hadst banned
Beyond forgiveness!" "Even at his demand!"
"Ah, no! for his sweet sake might all things be,
Except to lose him." "He is lost, -- and we
(Thou, too, old man!) are childless in the land!"

XVII.

Thus brokenly, scarce knowing what we said,
We clung like drowning men beneath the wave,
That nor can hurt each other, nor can save,
But breast to breast with iron arms are wed
Till Death so leaves them. Us the servants led --
Pale, awe-struck helpers -- through the palace-door
And glimmering halls, to lay on Clelia's bed
The broken lily we together bore.

XVIII.

God's thunder stroke his haughty heart had bowed:
It bled with mine among the common dust
Where Rank puts on the sackcloth of the crowd,
And sits in equal woe: his guilt avowed,
And mine, there came a sad, remorseful trust,
And while the double midnight gathered there
From sable hangings and the starless air,
We held each other's hands, and wept aloud.

XIX.

And he confessed, how, after weary search
And many a vain device employed, he found
By chance in Zara, on Dalmatian ground,
As altar-piece within a votive church
Some shipwrecked Plutus built, -- the Mother mild
In whose foreboding face my Clelia smiled;
And thence, by slow degrees, to Como's side
Had followed home the trail I thought to hide.

XX.

And there had seized me, but the boy displayed
Patrician beauty, and the failing line,
Now trembling o'er extinction, might evade
Its fate in him. This changed the first design,
And what the sordid nurse for gold betrayed
Or those Art-hucksters chattered, easy made
The rape, whose issue should, with even blow,
Revenge and compensate: but now, -- ah, woe!

XXI.

The issue had been reached: too dark and drear,
Too tragic, pitiful, and heart-forlorn,
Could any heart contain it, to be borne, --
And mine refused, rebelled. Behind his bier
No meek-eyed Resignation walked, or Grief
That catches sunshine in each falling tear
To build her pious rainbow: but with scorn
I thrust aside the truths that bring relief

XXII.

I spurned, though kindly, -- for the old man's frame
Stumbled in Death's advancing twilight, -- all
His offers: gold -- the proud Pandolfan hall --
Place, that should goad the lagging feet of Fame --
And from his sombre palace, shuddering still,
Cold with remembered horror, took my name,
My own, restored; and climbed the northern hill
As one who lives, though dead his living will.

XXIII.

Some habit, working in my passive feet,
Its guidance gave: the mornings came and went:
Around me spread the fields, or closed the street,
And often, Night's expanded firmament
Opened above the lesser dome of Day,
And wild, tumultuous tongues of darkness sent
To vex my path, -- till, in our old retreat,
I ceased to hold my reckless heart at bay!

XXIV.

Some natures are there, fashioned ere their birth
For sun, and spring-time, and the bliss of earth;
Who only sing, achieve, and triumph, when
The Hours caress, and each bright circumstance
Leaps to its place, as in a starry dance,
To shape their story. These the fortunate men,
When Fate consents, whose lives are ever young,
And shine around whate'er they wrought or sung!

XXV.

Akin to these am I, -- or deemed it so,
And thus beyond my present wreck beheld
No far-off rescue. All my mind, impelled
By some blind wrath that would resent the blow,
Though impotent, caught action from despair,
And reached, and groped, -- as when a man lets go
A jewel in the dark, and seeks it where
The furzes prick him and the brambles tear.

XXVI.

The clash of inconsistent qualities
No labor stayed, or beauteous passion smoothed,
But each let loose, and grasping, by degrees,
Sole sway, made chaos. Turbulent, unsoothed
By either's rule, -- since order failed therein,
And hope, the tidal star of restless seas, --
I turned from every height, once fair to win,
And sinned 'gainst Art the one unpardoned sin!

XXVII.

For thus I reasoned: what avail my gifts,
Which but attract, provoke the spoiling Fate? --
Nor for themselves their destinies create,
But task my life; and then the thunder rifts
Their laid foundations! Why of finer nerve
The members doomed to bear more cruel weight?
Or daintier senses, if they only serve
To double pangs, already doubly great?

XXVIII.

Lo! yonder hind, on whom doth Life impose
So slight a burden, finds his path prepared;
Unthinking fares as all his fathers fared,
And cheap-won joys and soon-subsiding woes
Nor cleave his heart too deep nor lift too high
Peaceful as dew-mist from an evening sky
The years descend, until they bid him close
Upon an easy world a quiet eye!

XXIX.

He sees the shell of Earth -- no more yet more
Were useless, -- attributes of thankful toil;
The olive orchards, dark with ripening oil;
The misty grapes, the harvests, tawny-hoar;
The glossy melons, swelling from the vine;
The breezy lake, alive with darting spoil;
And dances woo from yonder purple shore,
And yonder Alps but cool his summer wine!

XXX.

He lives the common life of Earth: she grants
Result to instinct, food to appetite:
With no repressed desire his bosom pants.
Nor that self-torturing, questioning in ward sight
Vexes his light, unconscious consciousness.
He loves, and multiplies his life, -- no less
His virile pride and fatherly delight;
And all that smites me, visits him to bless.

XXXI.

If this the law, that narrower powers enjoy
Their use, denied the greater, -- nay, are nursed
And helped, while these their energies destroy
In baffled aspirations, crossed and cursed
By what with brightening promise lured them on, --
Then life is false, its purposes reversed,
Its luck for those who leave its veils undrawn,
And Art the mocking glory of its dawn

XXXII.

Not calmly, as my memory now recalls
The crisis, -- fierce, vehemently, I tracked
The fatal truth through every potent fact
Of being: now in fancied carnivals
Of sense abiding, now with gloomy face
Fronting the deeper question that appalls,
Of "Wherefore Life? and what this brawling race,
Peopling a mote of dust in endless space?"

XXXIII.

"O fools!" I cried, "O fools, a thousand-fold
Tormented with your folly, seeking good
Where Good is not, nor Evil! -- words that hold
Your natures captive, making ye the food
And spoil of them that dare, with vision bold,
See Nothingness! -- slaves of transmitted fear
Of Power imagined, never understood,
The Demon rules you still that set you here!"

XXXIV.

The curse I would have broken bound me still.
As flowery chains aforetime, fetters now
Of tyrant Art subdued my wandering will,
And made its youthful, glad, spontaneous vow
An iron law, whence there was no escape.
No rest, though hopeless, would my brain allow,
But drew the pictures of its haunting ill,
And gave its reckless fancies hue and shape.

XXXV.

So, after many days, the cobwebbed door
Gave sullen entrance: naught was there displaced;
And first I turned, with pangs and shud dering haste,
My young St. John, -- I would not see it more.
Then snatched an empty canvas from the floor
And drew a devil: therein did I taste
Fierce joys of liberty, for what I would
I would, -- Art was itself a Devilhood!

XXXVI.

This guilty joy, the holiest to debase, --
To use the cunning, born of pious toil,
The purest features of my dreams to soil,
And drag in ribaldry the pencil's grace, --
Grew by indulgence. Forms and groups unclean
Or mocking, faster than my hand could trace
Their vivid, branding features, thrust a screen
My restless woe and dead desire between.

XXXVII.

Sometimes, perchance, a grim, sarcastic freak
My pencil guided, and I stiffly drew
Byzantine saints, of flat, insipid cheek
And monstrous eye; or some Madonna meek,
With dwarfish mouth, like those of Cimabue;
Or martyr-figures, less of flesh than bone,
Lean hands, and lips forever making moan, --
A travesty of woe, distorted, weak.

XXXVIII.

Or, higher ranging, touched the field that charms
Monastic painters, who, in vision warm
The Mystery grasp, and wondrous frescos form
Where God the Father, with wide-spreading arms,
Rides on the whirlwind which His breath has made,
Or sows His judgments, Earth in darkness laid
Beneath Him, -- works which only not blaspheme,
Because the faith that wrought then was supreme.

XXXIX.

Thus habit grew, imagination stalked
In shameless hardihood from things profane
To sacred: nothing hindered, awed, or baulked
The appetite diseased, and such a plan
I sketched, as never since the world began --
So strange and mad -- engendered any brain.
Once entertained, the lovely-loathsome guest
Clung to my fancy and my hand possessed.

XL.

Not broad the canvas, but the shapes it showed,
With utmost art defined, might almost seem
To grow and spread, dilating with the theme.
Filling the space, a lurid ocean glowed
In endless billows, tipped with foam of fire,
Shoreless: but far more dreadful than a dream
Of Hell, the shapes which in that sea abode,
With sting and fang, and scaly coil and spire!

XLI.

One with a lizard's sinuous motion slipped
Forth from the dun recesses of the wave,
Man-eyed and browed, but tusked and lipped
Like river-horse: its claws another drave
Within a ghastly head, whose dim eyes gave
Slow tears of blood: and with a burning tongue
In brazen jaws out-thrust, another stripped
From floating bones the flesh that round them clung!

XLII.

And in the midst, suspended from above
Just o'er the blazing foam, in light intense,
A naked youth -- a form of strength and love
And beauty, perfect as the artist's sense
Dreams of a god; and every glorious limb
Burned in a glow that made those bil lows dim.
A weird and awful brilliance, coming whence
No eye might fathom, dashed alone for him!

XLIII.

Let down from Somewhere by a might chain
Linked round his middle, lightly, graciously
He swung, and all his body seemed to be
Compact of molten metal, such a stain
Of angry scarlet streamed and shot around:
The face convulsed, yet whether so with pain
Or awful joy, no gazers might agree,
And damp the crispy gold his brows that crowned.

XLIV.

And, as he swung, all hybrid monsters near,
Dark dragon-leech, huge vermin human-faced,
Their green eyes turned on him with hideous leer,
Or stretched abhorrent tentacles, to taste
His falling ripeness. Through the picture spread
A sense of tumult, hinting to the ear
The snap and crackle of those waters red,
And hiss, and howl, and bestial noises dread.

XLV.

Unweariedly I wrought, -- each grim detail
As patient-perfect, as from Denner's brush,
Of hair, or mouldy hide, or pliant mail,
Or limbs, slow-parting, as the grinders crush
Their quivering fibres: good the workmanship,
Yet something unimagined seemed to fail, --
A crowning Horror, in whose iron grip
The heart should stifle, bloodless be the lip

XLVI.

This to invent, with hot, unresting mind
I labored: early sat and late, possessed
With evil images, with wicked zest
To wreak my mood, though it might curse my kind,
On Evil's purest type, and horridest;
And never young ambition heretofore
In noble service so itself outwore.
What thus we seek, or soon or late we find.

XLVII.

One morn of winter, when unmelted frost,
Beneath a low hung vault of moveless cloud,
Silvered the world, even while my head was bowed
In half-despair, my brain the Horror crossed,
Unheralded; and never human will
Achieved such fearful triumph! Never came
The form of that which language cannot name,
So armed the life of souls to crush and kill!

XLVIII.

And this be never unto men revealed,
To curse by mere existence! Knowledge taints,
Drawn from such crypts, the whitest robes of saints;
Though faith be firm, and warrior-virtue steeled
Against assault, the Possible breaks in
Their borders, and the soul that cannot yield
Must needs receive the images it paints,
And shudder, sinless, in the air of Sin!

XLIX.

My blood runs chill, remembering now the laugh
Wherewith, enlightened, I the pencil seized, --
Half deadly-smitten, fascinated half,
Yet sworn to do the dreadful thing I pleased!
All things upheld my mood with evil guise:
The palette-colors, to my sense diseased,
Winked wickedly, like devils' slimy eyes,
And darkness closed me from the drooping skies!

L.

As when a harp-string in a silent room
At midnight snaps, with weird, melodious twang,
So suddenly, through inner, outer gloom
A sweet, sharp sound, vibrating slowly rang
And sank to humming music; while a stream
Of gathering odor followed, as in dream
We braid the bliss of music and perfume, --
And pierced, I sat, with some divinest pang.

LI.

And, as from sound and fragrance born, a glow
All rosy-golden, fair as Alpine snow
At sunset, grew, -- mist-like at first, and dim,
But brightening, folding inwards, fold on fold,
Until my ravished vision could behold
Complete, each line of sunny-shining limb
And sainted head, soft-posed as I had drawn
My boy -- my Angelo -- my young St. John!

LII.

O beauteous ghost! O sacred loveliness!
Unworthy I to look upon thy face,
Unworthy thy transfigured form to trace,
That stood, expectant, waiting but to bless
By miracle, where I intended crime!
The folded scroll, the shadowy cross of reed
He bore, -- St. John, but not of mortal seed:
So God beheld him, in that early time!

LIII.

Dew came to burning eyes: a heavenly rain,
A balmy deluge, bathed my arid heart,
And washed that hateful fabric of the brain
To rot, a ruin, in some Hell of Art.
A sweet, unquestioning, obedient mood
Made swift revulsion from the broken strain
Of my revolt; and still the Phantom wooed,
As bright, and wonderful, and mute, it stood.

LIV.

Yet I, through all dissolving, trembling deeps
Of consciousness, his angel-errand knew.
The guilty picture fell, and forth I drew
My dim St. John from out the dusty heaps,
And cleansed it first, and kissed in reverence
The shadowy lips, -- fresh colors took, and true,
And painted, while on each awakened sense
The awful beauty of the Phantom grew.

LV.

All hoarded craft, all purposes and powers
Together worked: the scattered gleams of thought
As through a glass my heart together brought
To light my hand: the chariots of the Hours
For me were stayed: I knew not Earth nor Time,
But painted nimbly in a trance sublime,
And tint by tint my charmed pencil caught,
And line by line, the loveliness it sought,

LVI.

Mine eyes were purged from film: I saw and fixed
The subtle secrets, not with old despair
But with undoubting faith my colors mixed,
And with unfaltering hand the breeze-blown hair,
The dark, unfathomed eyes, the lips of youth,
The dainty, fleeting grace that stands betwixt
The babe and child, in members pure and bare,
Portrayed, with joy that owned my pencil's truth.

LVII.

And he, my heavenly model! how he shone,
Unwearied, silent, -- drawn, a golden form,
Against the background of a sky of storm,
On Ammon's desert hills! The landscape lone
Through all its savage slopes and gorges smiled,
Him to enframe, the God-selected child,
And o'er the shadowy distance fell a gleam
That touched with promised peace its barren dream.

LVIII.

At last, the saffron clearness of the west,
From under clouds, shot forth elegiac ray
That sang the burial of the wondrous day:
And sad, mysterious music in my breast,
As at the coming, now the close expressed.
Ah, God! I dared not watch him float away,
But, seized and shaken by the fading spell,
And covering up my face, exhausted fell.

LIX.

There, when my beating heart no longer shook
The sense that listened, though that music died,
A solemn Presence lingered at my side;
And drop by drop, as forms an infant brook
Within a woodland hollow, soft, unheard,
And out of nothing braids its slender tide,
The sense of speech the living silence stirred
And wordless sound became melodious word!

LX.

"O weak of will!" (so spake what seemed a voice)
"And slave of sense, that, hovering in extremes,
Dost oversoar, and undermine thy dreams
Behold the lowest, highest! Make thy choice, --
Lord of the vile or servant of the pure:
Be free, range all that is, if better seems
Freedom to smite thyself, than to endure
The pain that worketh thine immortal cure!

LXI.

"Lo! never any living brain knew peace,
That saw not, rooted in the scheme of things,
Assailing and protecting Evil! Cease
To beat this steadfast law with bleeding wings,
For know, that never any living brain,
Which rested not within its ordered plane,
Restrung the harp of life with sweeter strings,
Or made new melodies, except of pain!

LXXII.

"Where wast thou, when the world's foundations first
Were laid? Didst thou the azure tent unfold?
Or bid the young May-morning's car of gold
Herald the seasons? Wouldst thou see reversed
The sacred order? Why, if life be cursed,
Add to its curses thy rebellion bold?
Or has thy finer wisdom only yearned
For thankless gifts and recompense unearned?

LXIII.

"Come, thou hast questioned God: I question thee.
And truly thou art smitten, -- yet repress
Thine old impatience: calm the eyes that see
How blows give strength, and sharpest sorrows bless.
Free art thou: is thy liberty so fair
To hide the ghost of vanished happiness,
And sleep'st thou sweeter under skies, so bare
These thunder-strokes were welcome to its air?

LXIV.

"Why is thy life so sorely smitten Wait,
And thou shalt learn! Dead stones thy teachers were:
Through years of toil thy hand did minister
To joyous Art: thou wast content with Fate.
Take now thy ruined passion, fix its date,
Peruse its growth, and, if thou canst, replan
The blended facts of Life that made thee man; --
Could aught be spared, or changed for other state?

LXV.

"Not less thy breathing bliss than you der hind
Thou enviest, but more: therein it lies,
That each experience brings a twin surprise,
As mirrored in the glad, creative mind,
And in the beating heart. Behold! he bows
To adverse circumstance, to change and death;
But thou wouldst place thy fortune his beneath,
Shaming the double glory on thy brows!

LXVI.

"His pangs outworn, perchance some feeling lives
For those of others thine the lordly power
Transmuting all that loss or suffering gives
To Beauty! Even thy most despairing hour
Some darker grace informs, and like a bee
Thine Art sits hoarding in thy Passion's flower:
So vast thy need, no phase thine eye can see
Of Earth or Life, that not enriches thee!

LXVII.

"Such is the Artist, -- drawing precious use
From every fate, and so by laws divine
Encompassed, that in glad obedience shine
His works the fairer: his the flag of truce
Between the warring worlds of soul and sense:
By neither mastered, holding both apart,
Or blending in a newer excellence,
He weds the haughty brain and yearning heart.

LXVIII.

"Beneath tempestuous, shifting movement laid,
The base of steadfast Order he beholds,
And from the central vortex, unafraid,
Marks how all action evermore unfolds
Forth from a point of absolute repose,
Which hints of God; and how, in gleams betrayed,
The Perfect even in imperfection shows, --
And Earth a bud, but breathing of the rose!"

LXIX.

Even as the last stroke of a Sabbath bell,
Heard in the Sabbath silence of a dell,
Sounds on and on, with fainter, thinner note,
Distincter ever, till its dying swell
Draws after it the listener's ear, to float
Farther and farther into skies remote, --
So, when what seemed a voice had ceased, the strain
Drew after it the waiting, listening brain.

LXX.

And, following far, my senses on the track
Slid into darkness. Dead to life, I lay
Plunged in oblivious slumber, still and black,
All through the night and deep into the day:
Yet was it sleep, not trance, -- restoring Sleep,
That from the restless soul its house of clay
Protects; and when I woke, her dew so deep
Had drenched, the wondrous Past was washed away.

LXXI.

But there, before me, its recorded gift
Flashed from the easel, so divinely bright
It shamed the morning: then, returning swift,
The wave of Memory rolled, and pure delight
Filled mine awakening spirit, and I wept
With contrite heart, redeemed, enfranchised quite:
My sick revolt was healed, -- the Demon slept,
And God was good, and Earth her promise kept.

LXXII.

I wandered forth; and lo! the halcyon world
Of sleeping wave, and velvet-folded hill,
And stainless air and sunshine, lay so still!
No mote of vapor on the mountains curled;
But lucid, gem-like, blissful, as if sin
Or more than gentlest grief had never been,
Each lovely thing, of tint that shone impearled,
As dwelt some dim beatitude therein!

LXXIII.

There, as I stood, the contadini came
With anxious, kindly faces, seeking me;
And caught my hands, and called me by my name,
As one from danger snatched might welcomed be.
Such had they feared, their gentle greeting told, --
Seeing the cottage shut, the chimney free
Of that blue household breath, whose rings, unrolled,
The sign of home, the life of landscape, hold.

LXXIV.

So God's benignant hand directing wrought,
And Man and Nature took me back to life.
My cry was hushed: the forms of child and wife
Smiled from a solemn, moonlit land of thought,
A realm of peaceful sadness. Sad, yet strong,
My soul stood up, threw off its robes of strife,
And quired anew the world-old human song, --
Accepting patience and forgetting wrong!

LXXV.

Erelong, my living joy in Art returned,
But reverently felt, and purified
By recognition of the bounty spurned,
And meek acceptance in the place of pride.
Yet nevermore should brush of mine be drawn
O'er the unfinished picture of St. John:
What from the lovely miracle I learned,
The lines of colder toil should never hide.

LXXVI.

Though incomplete, it gave the prophecy
Of far-off power, whereto my patient mind
Must set its purpose, -- saying unto me:
"Make sure the gift, the fleeting forune bind, --
What once a moment was, may ever be!"
And when, in time, this hope securer grew,
Unto the picture, whence my truth I drew,
A sacred dedication I assigned.

LXXVII.

Pandolfo dead, the body of my child
Upon his mother's lonely breast I laid,
A late return; and o'er their ashes made
A chapel, in the green Bohemian wild,
For weary toil, pure thought, and silent prayer, --
A simple shrine, of all adornment bare,
Save o'er the altar, where, completed now,
St. John looks down, with Heaven upon his brow!

LXXVIII.

The Past accepts no sacrifice: its gates
Alike atonement and revenge out-bar.
We take its color, yet our spirits are
Thrust forward by a power which antedates
Their own: the hand of Art outreaches Fate's,
And lifts the bright, unrisen, refracted star
Above our dark horizon, showing thus
A future to the faith that fades in us.

LXXIX.

Not with that vanity of shallow minds
Which apes the speech, and shames the noble truth
Of them whose pride is knowledge, -- nor of Youth
The dazzling, dear mirage, that never finds
Itself o'ertaken, -- but with trust in fame,
As knowing fame, and owning now the pure
And humble will which makes achievement sure,
I, Egon, here the Artist's title claim!

LXXX.

The forms of Earth, the masks of Life, I see,
Yet see wherein they fail: with eager eyes
I hunt the wandering gleams of harmony,
The rarer apparitions which surprise
With hints of Beauty, fixing these alone
In wedded grace of form and tint and tone,
That so the thing, transfigured, shall arise
Beyond itself, and truly live in me.

LXXXI.

And I shall paint, discerning where the line
Wavers between the Human and Divine, --
Nor to the Real in servile bondage bound,
Nor scorning it: nor with supernal themes
Feeding the moods of o'er-aspiring dreams,
(For mortal triumph is a god uncrowned,) --
But by Proportion ruled, and by Repose,
And by the Soul supreme whence they arose.

LXXXII.

Not clamoring for over-human bliss,
Yet now no more unhappy, -- not elate
As one exalted o'er the level state
Of these ungifted lives, yet strong in this,
That I the sharpest stab and sweetest kiss
Have tasted, suffered, -- I can stand and wait,
Serene in knowledge, in obedience free,
The only master of my destiny!

LXXXIII.

And thus as in a clear, revealing noon
I live. So comes, sometimes, a mountain day:
A vague, uncertain, misty morn, and soon
Sharp-smiting sun, and winds' and lightning's play, --
A drear confusion, by the final crash
Dispersed, and ere meridian blown away;
And all the peaks shine bare, the waters flash,
And Earth lies open to the golden ray!

LXXXIV.

Lonely, perchance, but as these dark-browed hills
Are lonely, belted round with broader spheres
Of bluer world, my life its peace fulfils
In poise of soul: the long, laborious years
Await me: closed my holy task, I go
To reaccept, beyond the Alpine snow,
The gage of glorious battle with my peers, --
Not each of each, but of false art, the foe.

LXXXV.

Once more, O lovely, piteous, shaping Past,
I kiss thy lips: now let thy face be hid,
And this green turf above thy coffin-lid
Be turned to violets! The forests cast
Their shadowy arms across the quiet vale,
And all sweet sounds the coming rest foretell,
And earth takes glory as the sky grows pale,
So fond and beautiful the Day's farewell!

LXXXVI.

Farewell, then, thou embosomed isle of peace
In restless waters! Let the years increase
With unexpected blessing: thou shalt lie
As in her crystal shell the maiden lay,
Watched o'er by weeping dwarfs, -- too fair to die,
Yet charmed from life: and there may come a day
Which crowns Desire with gift, and Art with truth,
And Love with bliss, and Life with wiser youth!





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