A Meditation on the Nobel Prize Award for Medical Research, 1912 ALIVE it beats in a bosom of glass — A glowing heart! It has come to pass! Ventricle, auricle, Artery quivering: No metaphorical Symbol of art, No cold, mechanical trick of a cog, But ardent — an organ mysterious, Alive, delivering Serene, continuous Pulses, poised in its chamber of glass, Beating — the heart of a dog! And it came to pass While the hearts of men Were selling and buying The blood of their brothers, Then, even then — While grocer and draper And soldier were eying Their market-news in the morning paper, And, musing there among the others, Their poet of words Stood staring — his back to the laboratory (Where the poet of life Plied ether and knife) — Stood musing his rhymes for a miracle-story Of Babylon queens or Attic birds. Yet others were there more strange (More strange, as they spoke in the holy name Of the human heart, while still their eyes Were blind to the light love's visions range) — For they cried: "Lo, the dog — he dies! Spare him the knife! What have ye done, Awarders of fame! Will you grant to one Who slaughters — the great world-prize?" Yet these are the same Who cherish the deed and worship the pain Of saints that offered their blood in fire For the meed of men, And these are the same who bend the knee To One who hung on the bleeding tree Under the seraphim: In the name — in the hallowed name of Him Who raised us from Caliban, Would they grudge to a dog — what a god might aspire: To render his heart for the Heart of Man? How calm in its crystal tomb It beats to the mandate of life! How hush it waits in the sexless womb For the hour of its strange midwife — The seer, whose talismanic touch Shall give it birth in another — what? The heart of a dog once, was it not? So then, if it still be such, Why, then, the dog — (cur, thoroughbred, Mastiff, was it, or hound?) — What of the dog? — is he quick or dead? His soul (as they used to say) In what Elysian field should he stray, Or where lie down in his grave? For hark! — Through the clear concave Of the glass, that delicate pulsing sound! Ah, once, how it whirred in the flooded dark Of his deep-lunged chest, with rhythmic beat To the wild curvet of his wonderful feet And the rapturous passion of his bark, As he welcomed his homing master's hand, To crouch at the quick command! @3Yet it never has ceased to beat:@1 — Charmed by the poet of life, Freed by his art and the cunning knife That counterfoils the shears of fate, See it quiver now in that golden bar Of noon — unlaboring, isolate, Alive, in a crystal jar! The heart of a dog — why pause? Why pause on your brink, bright jar? Or why This reticent allocution? A dog! — Shall I stop at to-day, because To-morrow it might be I? — Yea, and if it be! Even this heart of me The subtle bard of life with his blade To sever from out the mystic whole I have deemed my Soul And shatter me — like no cloven shade Divined by a Dante's ecstasy — In morsels to immortality, Piecemeal to dissolution! This, then, that knocks at my breast — Starting at the image of its own inquest Hung in a gleaming jar — this sentient thing Responsive in the night To messages of grandeur and delight, Pensive to Winter, passionate to Spring, Mounting on strokes of music's rhythmic wing, Beating more swift when my beloved's cheek Ruddies with rapture the tongue fails to speak, And pausing quite When her rose turns to white — This servant, delicate to suffering, Insurgent to restraint, soothed by redress, This shall the life-bard place upon his shelf Beside the dog — and both shall acquiesce. For he — artist of baffling life — himself Sculptor and plastic instrument — He holds within his hand the vast intent, And carves from out the crimson clay of death Incredible images Of quickening fauns, and headless victories More terrible than her of Samothrace, — Yea, toys with such as these, As, silent, he lifts a severed Gorgon's face Toward his own; (The watchers hold their breath, Hiding their dread.) Calmly he looks — nor turns to stone, But with a touch freezes the sphinx instead. Till last, all pale, beside him — like a dream That rises into daylight out of sleep — Death rises from the mystic, crimson stream And murmurs at his ear: "What, then, am I? And what art thou whose scalpel strikes so deep To slay me? Yea, I felt it glance me by And I am wounded! Give it me!" — They clutch: Death snatches, and his frozen fingers touch The scalpel's edge — when lo, a lightning gleam Ruddies their wrestling shadows on the night; Immense they lengthen down the vasty gloom And darken in their height The rafters of a silent room: Around its walls, ranged in the crystal jars Of infinite stars, Beat, as they burn, the myriad hearts of life; In lordship, where their lonely shadows loom, Death and the Artist grapple for the knife. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOR A' THAT AND A' THAT; SONG by ROBERT BURNS THE BOROUGH: LETTER 22. POOR OF THE BOROUGH. PETER GRIMES by GEORGE CRABBE CREDO by WILLIAM ARTHUR DUNKERLEY THE PUMPKIN by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE SUPPLIANTS: THE WORLD'S HARMONIOUS PLAN by AESCHYLUS THE SONG OF AMORGEN by AMORGEN; AMERGIN GLUINGEI; |