PART XII.

There are three Powers that rule mankind, time, life,
And circumstance, on whose material shrines
We sacrifice ourselves. There is no good
Sent forth by them without the attendant ill
Its following shadow; and no wrong but brings
Awarding retribution, that ungrasped
By the quick hand and ever-watchful eye
Is lost for ever. Chance no substance owns,
Which is necessity.
Great Day came forth,
And the sun looked upon the rolling world.
Again that grey and antique hall, awaked
From its past sleep with a bewildered air,
Is thronged with life as if of yesterday.
Years lapsed, and change spoke audibly to all,
A monitor or gentle or severe.
Some had fall'n early from the tree of life;
Some, seared and withered, to its branches clung,
In painted rehabiliments of youth.
Art cannot paint the semi-animate,
Or renew vital freshness in the hue,
God alone breathes in youth. When will be felt
The grace and dignity that hangs around
The human ruin, and the reverence
Whose sympathy is love?
Within that court
All owned the festive hour, for still there dwells
In human congregations a delight;
Within the presence and the atmosphere
Of fellow-men is gendered sympathy
And love toward our kind, accordance owned
Of feeling and opinion, like the breath
Of flowers borne onwards from their living beds,
Infusing each as with a kindred soul.
And there a feudal interest was owned,
For in the chair sat that grey Earl whose name
A veneration and respect instilled;
The Awarder still decreed, and by his side
Cornelia, staid and thoughtful as the Muse
Embodied, the wreath twined within her hands.
Then the quick eye of expectation turned
To where the former lyrist-victor sat.
They turned from him to that staid elder man
Who stood apart, whose song was memory;
Nor yet forgot the hand that chords evoked
Perturbing, but inspired.

On his face
The accusing witnesses of change and time
Had stamped their impresses. The lines of thought,
Furrows of grief or of endurance, were
Traced on that forehead, where a pallor spread,
Like a pale sky reflected in the lake.
And there were present those who knew the wreath
In the far world had been assigned to him,
That crowns the unconscious poet.
Among men
Are watchers of the soul, bearers of thought
Through generations; who sleep not upon
Their watch-towers, but proclaim the stars that rise,
And own no planetary restlessness.
They herald silently to each the power,
Its culmination reached, that a new world
Is added to the silent hosts of heaven,
To live for ever.
The Awarder rose
And waved his hand to Astrophel; then burst
A shout from those, the few, within whose hail
Is recognition, and foreshadowing
Of the event arrived. Upon his brow
Sate faith and honour; the nobility
Of nature stamped upon his countenance,
Whose light is couched within the earnest eyes.
" I crave a courtesy; be it ours to wait
Until the master of the lyric song
Shall lead the way, the twofold claim his own,
The stranger and the sometime victor joined."

Astrophel spake, and silently assumed
His seat. Opinion read in that appeal,
Within whose accents dwelt humility,
Faith felt but unavowed. The while, strained eyes,
Approving, dwelt on him, forth from the crowd,
Beside the Awarder's seat, the Lyrist rose,
And with him, silence; fealty of the soul,
That nothing owed to baser prejudice,
While in the deep tones of his mellow voice,
Each note a penetrating melody,
He pictured forth an episode from life.

Lady Constance.

" By the oriel, blazoned over with the arms of her proud race,
Sate the Lady Constance, leaning on her hand her pensive face;
While thought, like a joyless shadow, stole o'er her high brow upraised,
And remembrance dimmed the azure of her bright eyes where she gazed.

Records of the deathless poets lay before her while she drew
From their pictures the existence of romance she never knew;
Till in reverie abstracted wandered from the page her eye,
As before her rose the visions of a golden life gone by;

Of the lover breathing accents of a language that had fled;
Of the warrior with his laurels at the feet of beauty spread;
Of vows plighted whose fulfilment a life only could redeem;
Of idolatry to women parted like a vanished dream.

Yet in her bright train were nobles who to win her hand had striven;
For award of her proud favour each his coronet had given:
There were statesmen circled round her, patriot-men as virtues named,
Who to win that stately maiden had ambition's self disclaimed.

Yet among those lights that brightened the saloon wherein she reigned,
There were none her eye arresting, none that her young heart enchained;
In her bosom dwelt the spirit of a love her thought had crowned,
The ideal she had shadowed, the romance she had not found.

Then athwart the far Atlantic came a stranger to the gate
Of that Earl, a nameless pilgrim, with a mien and brow sedate.
Him no menials attended, heralds none proclaimed his name,
But his golden key of entrance was his wreath of lyric fame.

From the circle gathered round her in his pride he stood apart,
And he saw that lady lonely in her solitude of heart;
That the flattery floating round her, incense-like, arose unfelt,
That reserve within her bosom and a veiled attraction dwelt."

Then his lyre he wakened lightly as wind wandering o'er its strings,
When it weaves the thrilling music that to fond remembrance clings:
Half in symbol, half in shadow, her reflected life he threw,
The reality she lived in, the ideal that she drew.

But, while breathing in her spirit aspirations that he gave,
He felt not himself enfettered till he sank into her slave;
Till his eyes absorbed in gazing, the unconscious truth revealed,
That the poet and his lyre in the song to her appealed.

On her noble brow was written silent language that he read;
In her voice he felt the accents of a fate he ceased to dread;
In her step he saw the presence of her race ancestral told;
In her stately eyes that distance measureless between them rolled.

Then the haughtier soul repellent swelled his bosom while he knew
That a higher power was in him than from dust ancestral grew;
And he turned from her indignant with a spirit that defied
Chains that bound him, while he poured forth all his passion and his pride.

" Fare thee well! I found, I leave thee, but the shadow of the true;
I pass by thee as the floweret that beside my pathway grew,
Thus to wither, thus to perish, fate even thou canst not control,
For the life on earth immortal comes but from the poet's soul.

O thou loved one in thy beauty and thy pride exultant be,
Thou that walkest as if daylight showed no thing to rival thee!
On the front of thy towered castle blazons the heraldic shield,
On thy gates the rampant lion couches on the foughten field.

On thy forehead pride is seated, such as suits not mortal state;
In those eyes the conscious feeling of a birth and place elate:
As if thou heldst no thought in kindred with our race, as if thy line
Star-like from its sphere inclined not to regard the dust of mine!

Hear, thou fine yet fragile being, hear the thrilling truth from me: —
Thou in life hast overcome me, I in death will rule o'er thee:
Thou shalt hear prophetic warnings, thou that in a dream dost live,
Told thee in those living accents the great truth alone can give.

There's a greater than the hero, or crowned monarch on his throne:
'Tis the Mind that has ascended loftiest summits of its own;
That, with self-respect enfolded as a robe, repels or flings
From its aweless front dishonour cast from courtiers or from kings.

When that form is faded, aged, passed to ashes and is not,
When these towers in dust have crumbled, and their place and name forgot,
I will wake thee to remembrance, I the laurel o'er thee wave,
And I claim thee mine, the shadow, passed the portals of the grave! " "
He ceased, and through the hall was felt and heard
The sympathy of silence in the breath
Of audible respiration. Each eye fixed
On him whose meaning thrilled throughout the verse.
The natural thought and feeling, veiled erewhile
In quaintest phrase, unwoven filaments
Of brightest tissues, hues by lights obscured,
Were cast aside as masks no longer worn;
Passion unreined gave the full song a power
Till then unheard. The strain abruptly closed
Where dwelt design that marked the covert art.
Silence, a breathless presence, filled the hall;
Each eye dwelt on the man whose spirit spake
Through the verse unrepressed. In that arrest
Of popular mind, on scales impending poised,
Astrophel rose, and in his rising marked
Opinion ebbed from the opposed.
He rose,
Not an aspirant with flushed cheek and eye,
No perturbation showed upon his brow;
The temple of his life was motionless.
Seer-like, he stood as prescient of the event,
Who heard response from an invisible shrine.
And then he spake, not in the rolling verse
That leaps o'er depths it fathoms not, or lark
Cloud-folded, singing in aerial flight,
But with a steadfast utterance that rose
Like a fine exhalation on the air,
Or organ note that pealing fills the ear
Of silence, vibrating its world of sound:
He sought but to confess what he had done;
The inspiration of the song and hope
From the great life existent in him still.

The Inboration

I

" I invoke thee no more, thou heavenly Muse!
Such still thou wert and art, that dost infuse
The inspirations time nor life efface
Within the Soul that is thy dwelling-place.
I raise the song to thee from whom all thought
Or gentle or heroic, all of grace,
All of endurance, faith, and hope, are taught,
Those triad gods that emanate from thee.
Thou wert man's earliest idolatry,
The veneration of the elder time;
A presence ever felt within the hearts
Of mightiest poets. I have called thee not
To the light song that still the tale imparts
Of love or hate, or airiest jealousy,
Fancies that glide along the current rhyme
And lapsing memory with the hour forgot;
But to those calmer heights, where gleam from far
Prophetic lights that shall not pass away;
To wrestlings of this spiritual clay
With conscience, fought not on ensanguined fields,
But in the inmost heart when the soul wields
The power by God accorded, and the will
Chainlessly wrestling with confronted ill.

II

And then I turned from man, and gazed where sat
Star-browed Urania throned in highest heaven!
And, on the wings ascending she had given,
From earth's low habitations, dim and dark,
I looked on elder life, for I had felt
Solemn ambition cherished while I knelt;
Through the wild desert the first Murderer
I traced, and saw repentant woman err
With Angels, and the deluging deep, and ark
Descending, dove-like, upon Ararat.
Then, as the river deepens from the rill,
I sought the enlarging purpose to fulfil,
And yearning of a life; to walk with him,
Thy servant, and behold lost Paradise,
Chaos, the void of space, and Hades dim.
And when I saw that Seer, with reverent eyes,
And listened to his mighty melodies,
On man and fallen spirits, I aspired,
Far-pacing in that garden's path retired,
Even as the Man divine to blend a name
With something holier than earthly fame."

The song ceased; not as once abruptly closed,
But measured and sedate, as one who turned
To sovereign Opinion; to proclaim
With the humility of self-respect
The thing he was. Nor vain nor idle boast
Given, nor tale of injury confessed,
But claim avowed and open of a life
For the wreath won, accorded or withheld.
He but rehearsed his effort; all he wrought
Within the golden mines of poetry,
In solitude and shadow.
The lay ceased,
Like the last notes of a deep melody
Vibrating into silence. Art and nature
Had spoken forth: the tale of scorn was told,
And passion unrepressed; the fevered pride
Of self-love manifest; and the calm power
Of the freed soul that rises fetterless,
Earth's dust and sordor shaken from its wings.
The tide of popular opinion ebbed,
And left the rival on the sands alone.
Then from his chair of state the Awarder rose
Amid the shouting crowds. He pointed where
Stood the low column, like an altar-place
The throne confronting; thereon tomes were spread,
And scrolls, and, crowning them, the wreath.
" Draw near,
You honourable rivals, in whose hearts
No envy dwells, nought but the ardent pulse
Of noblest emulation, mindful still
The gates of Fame are open thrown to all.
Be your wreath one, though twain; to you assigned
This myrtle twined with flowers aerial,
And stately as your lays, like blossoms opened
To finest issues; and to you the award
Of laurel grafted on the tree of life
By that great moral power that lives when growths
From lighter seeds have faded. Be the crown,
Given by the Muse, embodied not in vain."

He took the wreath and gave it to his child
Before the applauding crowds. Sedate she rose
As one who felt the office she assumed,
Obedient to the sire. She then had crowned
The victor's brow retiring into shade,
But the Awarder stayed. He gently took
The laurel-leaves round which her fingers twined,
And gave the crown and hand to Astrophel.