PART VIII.
The Autumn is a glory and a joy;
The pageantry of Nature passing by
In her last grand procession. Gorgeous days,
When, like twin Angels, time and life stand still;
When earth puts on her crown and richest robes
For feasting and for mirth and revelry,
Ere Death, the Shadow, enters at the door;
When wreathed with golden honours, the woods wear
Mantles of regal grandeur; when the eye
Looks to the azure where the mountainous clouds
Dwarf, as in mockery, the domes of earth,
Folding the sunlight in their mighty breasts;
When the heart feels the pulses of its youth,
And renovated power, and draws its strength,
Gathered from nature's ruins.
Day rose o'er
That quaint town with its antiquated hall,
Time of inaction when event was not;
Where all was chartered idleness. Holiday
Spake out from each glad face in that broad light,
Familiar to the eye that loves its kind.
Day set apart through generations past,
The era of the guild with feasting held
And dance and revelry. On this bright morn
Shall Art and Science meet, and Melody
Softening the austerer thought. And with them joined
Their sister Poetry. Thus that grey hall
Looked like a thing of life, basking again
Like some old tortoise on the sunny shore.
No casement but was living with bright eyes
And joyous faces, nor a space within
Unfilled with life and motion, decked with hues
Varied like beds of flowers. The music left
The mind to gentlest impresses attuned.
Then murmurings arose of voices hushed,
As of expectancy repressed; for now
The Olympian strife shall be again renewed,
The laureate-wreath awarded as of old;
Bound on the victor's forehead by the hand
Of the embodied Muse.
Then audibly rose,
Accents that died away through the far crowd,
Like the crispation of the forest leaves,
When the air sighs through them its voice of rest.
Vacant the chair beneath the oriel raised,
As if no rival were to grace the lists.
Abruptly then the herald's voice called forth
The candidate; a moment answerless
Amidst the breath withheld of silence.
Then, as one
Who rises in expectancy of him
Who came not to the seat opposed,
Stood Astrophel; not as one entering
On fields untried, with lighter arms unproved,
But disciplined by use and nerved by strength
Nurtured in solitude.
From crowds estranged,
Wrapt in imaginative dreams, he knew
No living opposition; he had foiled
No ardent rival, conquering but in thought;
His growing name was known but to the few,
As one whose shield might be the foremost hung,
In after-time. Meanwhile he stood in shade
Unseen, and unregarded. And now broke
Upon him the abrupt reality;
The world confronted in that hall before
The Man retiring and reserved, whose life
Had been as one confessional poured forth
To elements, to mountains, and the sea.
He gazed around, and saw along the walls
Grey niches filled with spirits of the dead,
Watching him, while he felt that honour spake
From their grave foreheads.
He stood forth as one
Among the eminent; the pale light cast
From the upturning faces of the crowd,
Centred on him as on a leader owned.
They read self-trust and faith couched on his brow.
He lightly touched the harp beside him hung,
Accordant with the song, then, eagle-like,
Plunged in its depths.
It was the lay of him
Who had survived life's foughten fields, and proved
And suffered all; within whose spirit dwelt
Thought, meditating on the dreams that were.
The shadow cast as by indifference sate
Upon his countenance, as if he knew
The lightness of the award for which he strove.
It was a record of the past revealed;
The revelations of forms palpable,
And deeds and thoughts re-acting on the soul.
All was invoked and told; all he had proved
Of fiery reality, the ordeal
That leaves its lightning traces on the brain.
Soarings of feverish hope to rise beyond
Oppressions of our life; the waxen wings
Dissolving, the power foiled in dizzy height,
The reins imaginative lost, the fall
Of Phaeton, the convulsive overthrow;
The earthlier chill that strikes upon the heart
Of prostrate hope, the cold oblivion
Silently hiding aspiration, crushed,
Yet sleepless; the Antaean spring renewed
To the embrace that must succeed or die;
Then gathered from the dust, the self-respect
Whose crown is given by humility,
Existing in him still.
And then he drew,
Apart from that imaginative life,
His inmost nature to its core. He bared
The passions to their roots, in all their strength.
He threw before them in his words of flame
Youth's ardent aspirations; all the wild
And passionate eloquence that pours itself
To Nature, on material altars throned;
All that he saw on mountains and on shores,
Listening to the deep meanings of the waves;
All the pure emanation of the heart
To setting suns, when faith and love are one;
All was confessed of yearning to the great
And beautiful in Nature as in man.
Then came the tale of human passion told;
All that the full heart has to woman poured;
All the first eloquence of burning words,
The thrill, the earthquake struggle, felt but once,
And never more; revulsion and its chill;
Passion repressed, that must be freed or die:
These, with an utterance that thrilled the chords,
Those human bosoms vibrating each note,
Till the embodied past before them grew
Evoked by him who dared unveil his soul.
He ceased abruptly, like the cataract
In its strong course arrested. Then burst forth
The articulation of responsive life
That hung upon the notes of that deep song.
They felt the revelation that betrayed
Confessions of their own; that the great heart
Of Man is one; and still the applause rolled on
And rose and fell like thunder in that sound
Foreshadowing victory. Then breathings deep
Lapsed into sighs suppressed, for he had delved
The grave of their past lives and raised again
The indwelling spirits slumbering till evoked,
Conscience, the shadow and the voice of God,
Recalling memories of deeds or words,
Or scenes for which they prayed forgetfulness.
But while the accord into a tempest swelled,
Like an abstraction sate the Man that raised;
His inward life filled with those sounds that are
Divinest offerings to humanity,
The incense raised to the ascendant Mind,
The natural monarch seated on his throne.
Unconscious of the eyes that grew on him,
Absorbed in reverie, he ceased to hear;
He looked impassive, but was not.
He weighed
The value of each note in his poised mind:
But this was the intoxicating drug
Of conquerors, and heroes, sought alike,
This triumph of the moment, by the king,
Statesman, or bard, or sage; the living voice,
The palpable shape of Fame, the god revealed.
That audible incense melted into air,
Until the hall was silent as a vault
Where lie the dead entombed; the fealty
Of homage paid to him that bore them on
As crowds by trumpet's clang, and roll of drums,
When some great chieftain passes on his way.
He felt the wings of victory shadow him;
That he had told the passion of the soul;
The heart of life revealed.
And thus his song
Rolled on its course, cleaving like torrent wild,
Through imminent paths on sweeping in its strength,
But wanting that calm purpose, and repose
Within whose bosom sits as on a throne,
The concentrated god of silent power.
The fiery strife Milonian limbs revealed;
The oak, asunder rent, reclosed, and left
The wrestler conquered by the power he quelled.
Even thus the vision of Astrophel, obscured,
By passionate strength forgot the reins of art,
Those subtler touches of the finer chords
That vibrate on the soul; that open gleams
Of elfin forms, frail presences that float
Upon the surface of reality;
Of agencies that live in spheres beyond
The pale of nature, or evoked from depths
Unfathomed of the soul.
And with them joined
The visible angels of our daily life;
The love that trembles into being, joy
That lives upon the breast of hope, and faith
Whose life is vision; these, elusive all.
He held not the familiar wand that called
Their spiritual shapes before the eye,
His soul had dwelt with stormier elements,
And walked with Titans in their solitudes.
And thus, for moments wrapt in consciousness
Of triumph that was not, sate Astrophel:
He felt the laurel leaves, and heard the award;
The fit of inspiration was poured forth,
The crowning effort made.
Then suddenly
He ceased to hear; thought bodied darker shades:
Even on the wings of inspiration borne,
He felt two spirits in him lived; the one
Apart, indwelling but unraised, remote
From perturbation, unreflected still,
And the calm presence of a holier life.
Like the great Florentine, he had revealed
Material demigods in strength reposed
On the right arms of their sublimity.
And then his being lowered as beneath
The expectancy of coming ill. He felt
Silence creep through the crowd like the fine air
Along the shivering leaves of the stilled woods,
Or as o'er nature's face the sun o'ercast,
When the inaudible breathings of the storm
Are felt, ere seen the cloud-robed potentate.
He turned, and saw above the sea of heads,
Whose eyes upraised were centred upon him,
His lyric rival, Auriol of the West.
He rose as one who on himself relied,
Even in his rising was an utterance felt,
Foreshadowing art; the motion of the bark
Emerging from its shadows, ere unfurled
The spread of its expanding wings. He stood
Motionless as a cloud when silvered o'er
With the sun's heavenly alchymy.
His regard
Silence imposed, while its calm impress drew
Reluctant homage to a claim unmade.
Steadfast his eye, and lighted with a ray
That owned no planetary restlessness;
The intuition and the vision that saw
Its end of thought, the consciousness of words
Of music steeped in fancy's subtlest hues,
Playing, or lightly dallying with the song,
As butterflies with the unfolding flower.
A shade of scorn less visible than felt
Dwelt round his lips, preluding victory.
Averted eyes returned to Astrophel.
It was a face that fixed the arrested eye,
Till the mind shared the feeling that it gave,
A sense oppressed yet undefined. Upon
That countenance sat the spirit that revealed
Its inmost thought, the visor thrown aside
By self-respect that sate upon his brow
Where life was stamped as one soliloquy;
The visible mind that yearned to tell its thought;
The spirit that delved into the roots of life,
And knew the fruitage of the knowledge tree.
Unconscious of the gaze on him, his eyes
Upon the Lyrist turned, as he would look
Into his soul, and then the shadows grew
That bodied into form. He saw in thought,
Even as himself the immortal triumvir,
Conscious that fortune crowned the Augustan head.
In those first accents weighed and measured forth,
He read design that nothing left to chance,
Or breath of aspiration rising on
Enforced pinions.
Gazing on him thus,
Again the vision rose before his eyes,
Foreshadowing the present. He beheld
Ulysses rise to claim Achillean mail;
The panoply he could not bear when won.
Behind him stood in sullen shade apart,
Material Ajax of the sevenfold shield;
Shown by the gleam flashed from those fulgent arms
On his averted brow. The vision passed;
Again he heard that penetrating voice
Instilling the repose whence grew the power,
Felt o'er the thunder of the parted storm.
Then darker grew the mantle folding him;
Deeper and sterner shadows gathering round,
Slowly upheaved, revealing him of old,
Great Zeus as in immortal vision seen
By him, the sightless seer of Scio's Isle;
In vain the banded gods grasped from beneath
The golden chain to drag him from his throne;
They failed, they fell; then forth he sprang, the seer
Of that great dream, transformed into the foe;
He reeled before him vanquished; even he,
The Titan, with the thunder cloven deep
Within his aweless forehead.
The cloud passed,
The present rose, the hall, the multitude
The faces riveted upon the one.
It was a tale of life domestic told;
Familiar lights and shadows of the hour,
Of joy, of sorrow, or of suffering,
Woven in subtlest phrase, till films of thought,
Or fancies floating erewhile upon air,
Became as palpable realities.
The record told of woman's hopes and fears,
The young heart vibrating to life and sense
Of apprehensive being, the first love,
The opening and growth of its young birth
Pure as ethereal dews, the folding leaves
Of the closed flower, the thrill of happiness
Cherished, and veiled as from an ill unknown;
The Voice heard in the garden-paradise
Ere plucked the fruit, the growth and blossoming,
And emanation from the soul borne on,
Absorbed and blended with another's life.
Then, with a hand restrained by art, as one
Distrusting power, he struck on deeper chords;
The jealousy, the passion, and the grief,
The thought retiring, and the purpose veiled
Of hatred and revenge; then, less assured,
Confessions of despair.
Thus, listening,
Astrophel sate, conscious of many eyes
Gathered on one. He felt the bow was bent
That foiled the suitors, the winged arrow flown,
And the prize won by art. Meanwhile the lay
Embodied elfin fancies, till he saw
The graces floating round the verse that found
Its echoes in the depths of woman's heart.
He heard the crowd no more, nor saw the rays
Centring upon the fortunate. He turned
Toward the walls of that old hall, o'erhung
With portraits of the dead, obscured or dimmed
On faded canvas: chiefs of stricken fields,
Whose mortal god was honour; sages grey,
Whose souls were pilgrims after truth unfound;
Poets, with crowning wreaths upon their brows,
The elder born of time; and they, the less,
Who in the laurel grasped a wreath of flame,
They in whose bosoms dwelt the god, who died
Their glorious inspirations unrevealed.
Each had his joy and suffering, each proved
Repulse and triumph; the ordeal was o'er;
But they had won their crowns and passed away,
Their end of life fulfilled, their records graven
On cliffs that mocked the storms and floods of time;
The ebb and flow of a humanity
For ever surging round them. Success looked
From their high foreheads; they had left on earth
Their settled rays of immortality;
Their lamps were hung around Fame's altar-place,
Fed with the oil of everlasting truth.
There stood the Comus whose so potent wand
Had drawn believers erewhile faithful; he
Who with his delicate and subtle art
Had steeped the sense in dreams of grief or joy.
Then rose the chorus of exulting sounds
Whose faintest note was victory. He heard
The vital recognition that is given,
When the great popular heart reveals its life,
Responding as the rays of morning-light
To the Memnonian lyre.
They that erewhile
The victor owned were stilled; they had forgot
The power that bore them heavenward, that left
The mantle on their souls now fall'n to earth
Unraised and unrecalled; the rising sun
Mellowed the darkness of that thunder-cloud,
Until the image of the beautiful
Was mirrored on each bosom.
The song ceased,
But, ceasing, the low notes in each deep tone
Were as the voices of the stilly brook,
Heard from the depths of mountain solitudes.
Art matched itself with strength, prevailing still;
The Achillean panoply was won,
And Ajax fell upon his sevenfold shield.
No more he listened, conscious of the event.
He felt the branches of his inmost life
Thrill with the shadows of the passing storm
That had o'erthrown him; he bowed down to it,
Even as the oak upon the mountain top,
Rent, but unconquered still.
What marvel he
Abstracted stood, with his soul tempest-tossed?
The whirlwind loosened that through life had slept? —
Convulsion heaved from depths till now so stilled? —
Shadows of passions bodied round him rose,
White-lipped revenge that would annihilate
The thing that crossed his path; heart-withering scorn,
The jealousy with arm upraised, whose wrath
Should hurl to dust that yet unlaurelled head?
What marvel? happiness rests on its hope;
His was a life passed into poetry,
Become as one with him. And now the past,
And prescient future dreaming things to come,
Conquest and triumph, and time-honoured age,
Melted from his strong grasp, and in an hour.
He woke — he was — truth flashed across his soul
From self-forged lightnings. Could it be, he foiled?
Whose life had realised the poet's dream?
He who on mountain tops had gathered power
Till now unfailing? — who had drawn his strength
From nature; who had loved her aspect more
In grandeur than in beauty. The grey heath,
The rock, the pale lips of the wrathful Sea,
And stormier sunsets had inspired in him
Their elemental energies, that passed
Into his soul and left their image there.
Rather a Titan live in solitudes,
Than Sybarite of softer forms and hues;
Rather a watcher of the rushing storm,
Feeding its strength, than the reflecting stream
Glassing repose within its passionless breast.
His converse had been with the seers of song
Until their spirits blended with his own;
He who had fathomed passions imaged not
By dreamers, the perturbing chords that wake
Ambition, love, hate, triumph, and despair.
The shadowy wreath dropped from his head: he traced
The visible scroll of fate upon the wall,
That power had gone from him.
The pageant passed
Into a shadow and a memory,
The record of ovation that had been.
The victor felt the crown upon his brows,
The vanquished saw his own within the dust.
Rocklike he sat in that now echoless hall,
And gathered strength from his abandonment;
The tides had ebbed and left its base revealed.
And there he sate like Marius among
The ruins of his mind, evoking powers
Within; the imaginative faculty
Conscious of deathless being; hope and faith,
And self-respect that folds her mantle round,
And falls with dignity. And then he turned
To her, the holiest spirit raised by man,
The cinerary urn upon her head,
Humility; they wakened as from sleep,
And that great summons answered.
Nought endures
Of human suffering; spiritual throes
Expire; brands deepest stamped within the form,
Or seared upon the heart, pass on, and leave
No memory behind. The crown of thorns,
The sweat of blood, the cross of agony,
Is borne but for the hour; change, cloud-like, sits
Upon Duration's everlasting brow.
But in those moments brief he deemed he felt
The ineradicable wound that owned
No sedative of time. What deepened it,
Unmarked else, or unfelt? what stamped within
The indelible pang? The guardian of his life
Had watched that idlest foil. But now he stood,
Passion o'erruled, a sovereign in that hall;
He turned to her in thought, the living Muse,
Whose eyes had dwelt on him while he poured forth
Confession which she knew.
Perchance she felt
The perturbation of the song; the swell
And torrent of its power from her grew,
The tutelary Spirit of his soul.
She saw the rival, owned the spell of art;
Tissues of words inwoven into hues
That lived upon the eye of phantasy.
She heard not the award, passed from the crowd,
Even as the dewdrop melted from the boughs
Before the ascending sun. He saw her form
Retreating, and the gleam of her white robe
Through darker masses, as pale lightning seen
Through distant thunderclouds. Even in the song,
His conscious spirit felt departed power;
The tide in shallows lapsed that bore him on
The intuition dimmed; forms, half-raised, passed,
In their appearance vanishing. He saw
Visible Fortune leave him; friends, erewhile
His own, had fallen away; the scales were weighed
And found him wanting, Hebe's self had fled;
Even in that strife her eyes drew Astrophel
To follow her, abandoning the wreath
For a prize dearer to his heart than fame.
The Autumn is a glory and a joy;
The pageantry of Nature passing by
In her last grand procession. Gorgeous days,
When, like twin Angels, time and life stand still;
When earth puts on her crown and richest robes
For feasting and for mirth and revelry,
Ere Death, the Shadow, enters at the door;
When wreathed with golden honours, the woods wear
Mantles of regal grandeur; when the eye
Looks to the azure where the mountainous clouds
Dwarf, as in mockery, the domes of earth,
Folding the sunlight in their mighty breasts;
When the heart feels the pulses of its youth,
And renovated power, and draws its strength,
Gathered from nature's ruins.
Day rose o'er
That quaint town with its antiquated hall,
Time of inaction when event was not;
Where all was chartered idleness. Holiday
Spake out from each glad face in that broad light,
Familiar to the eye that loves its kind.
Day set apart through generations past,
The era of the guild with feasting held
And dance and revelry. On this bright morn
Shall Art and Science meet, and Melody
Softening the austerer thought. And with them joined
Their sister Poetry. Thus that grey hall
Looked like a thing of life, basking again
Like some old tortoise on the sunny shore.
No casement but was living with bright eyes
And joyous faces, nor a space within
Unfilled with life and motion, decked with hues
Varied like beds of flowers. The music left
The mind to gentlest impresses attuned.
Then murmurings arose of voices hushed,
As of expectancy repressed; for now
The Olympian strife shall be again renewed,
The laureate-wreath awarded as of old;
Bound on the victor's forehead by the hand
Of the embodied Muse.
Then audibly rose,
Accents that died away through the far crowd,
Like the crispation of the forest leaves,
When the air sighs through them its voice of rest.
Vacant the chair beneath the oriel raised,
As if no rival were to grace the lists.
Abruptly then the herald's voice called forth
The candidate; a moment answerless
Amidst the breath withheld of silence.
Then, as one
Who rises in expectancy of him
Who came not to the seat opposed,
Stood Astrophel; not as one entering
On fields untried, with lighter arms unproved,
But disciplined by use and nerved by strength
Nurtured in solitude.
From crowds estranged,
Wrapt in imaginative dreams, he knew
No living opposition; he had foiled
No ardent rival, conquering but in thought;
His growing name was known but to the few,
As one whose shield might be the foremost hung,
In after-time. Meanwhile he stood in shade
Unseen, and unregarded. And now broke
Upon him the abrupt reality;
The world confronted in that hall before
The Man retiring and reserved, whose life
Had been as one confessional poured forth
To elements, to mountains, and the sea.
He gazed around, and saw along the walls
Grey niches filled with spirits of the dead,
Watching him, while he felt that honour spake
From their grave foreheads.
He stood forth as one
Among the eminent; the pale light cast
From the upturning faces of the crowd,
Centred on him as on a leader owned.
They read self-trust and faith couched on his brow.
He lightly touched the harp beside him hung,
Accordant with the song, then, eagle-like,
Plunged in its depths.
It was the lay of him
Who had survived life's foughten fields, and proved
And suffered all; within whose spirit dwelt
Thought, meditating on the dreams that were.
The shadow cast as by indifference sate
Upon his countenance, as if he knew
The lightness of the award for which he strove.
It was a record of the past revealed;
The revelations of forms palpable,
And deeds and thoughts re-acting on the soul.
All was invoked and told; all he had proved
Of fiery reality, the ordeal
That leaves its lightning traces on the brain.
Soarings of feverish hope to rise beyond
Oppressions of our life; the waxen wings
Dissolving, the power foiled in dizzy height,
The reins imaginative lost, the fall
Of Phaeton, the convulsive overthrow;
The earthlier chill that strikes upon the heart
Of prostrate hope, the cold oblivion
Silently hiding aspiration, crushed,
Yet sleepless; the Antaean spring renewed
To the embrace that must succeed or die;
Then gathered from the dust, the self-respect
Whose crown is given by humility,
Existing in him still.
And then he drew,
Apart from that imaginative life,
His inmost nature to its core. He bared
The passions to their roots, in all their strength.
He threw before them in his words of flame
Youth's ardent aspirations; all the wild
And passionate eloquence that pours itself
To Nature, on material altars throned;
All that he saw on mountains and on shores,
Listening to the deep meanings of the waves;
All the pure emanation of the heart
To setting suns, when faith and love are one;
All was confessed of yearning to the great
And beautiful in Nature as in man.
Then came the tale of human passion told;
All that the full heart has to woman poured;
All the first eloquence of burning words,
The thrill, the earthquake struggle, felt but once,
And never more; revulsion and its chill;
Passion repressed, that must be freed or die:
These, with an utterance that thrilled the chords,
Those human bosoms vibrating each note,
Till the embodied past before them grew
Evoked by him who dared unveil his soul.
He ceased abruptly, like the cataract
In its strong course arrested. Then burst forth
The articulation of responsive life
That hung upon the notes of that deep song.
They felt the revelation that betrayed
Confessions of their own; that the great heart
Of Man is one; and still the applause rolled on
And rose and fell like thunder in that sound
Foreshadowing victory. Then breathings deep
Lapsed into sighs suppressed, for he had delved
The grave of their past lives and raised again
The indwelling spirits slumbering till evoked,
Conscience, the shadow and the voice of God,
Recalling memories of deeds or words,
Or scenes for which they prayed forgetfulness.
But while the accord into a tempest swelled,
Like an abstraction sate the Man that raised;
His inward life filled with those sounds that are
Divinest offerings to humanity,
The incense raised to the ascendant Mind,
The natural monarch seated on his throne.
Unconscious of the eyes that grew on him,
Absorbed in reverie, he ceased to hear;
He looked impassive, but was not.
He weighed
The value of each note in his poised mind:
But this was the intoxicating drug
Of conquerors, and heroes, sought alike,
This triumph of the moment, by the king,
Statesman, or bard, or sage; the living voice,
The palpable shape of Fame, the god revealed.
That audible incense melted into air,
Until the hall was silent as a vault
Where lie the dead entombed; the fealty
Of homage paid to him that bore them on
As crowds by trumpet's clang, and roll of drums,
When some great chieftain passes on his way.
He felt the wings of victory shadow him;
That he had told the passion of the soul;
The heart of life revealed.
And thus his song
Rolled on its course, cleaving like torrent wild,
Through imminent paths on sweeping in its strength,
But wanting that calm purpose, and repose
Within whose bosom sits as on a throne,
The concentrated god of silent power.
The fiery strife Milonian limbs revealed;
The oak, asunder rent, reclosed, and left
The wrestler conquered by the power he quelled.
Even thus the vision of Astrophel, obscured,
By passionate strength forgot the reins of art,
Those subtler touches of the finer chords
That vibrate on the soul; that open gleams
Of elfin forms, frail presences that float
Upon the surface of reality;
Of agencies that live in spheres beyond
The pale of nature, or evoked from depths
Unfathomed of the soul.
And with them joined
The visible angels of our daily life;
The love that trembles into being, joy
That lives upon the breast of hope, and faith
Whose life is vision; these, elusive all.
He held not the familiar wand that called
Their spiritual shapes before the eye,
His soul had dwelt with stormier elements,
And walked with Titans in their solitudes.
And thus, for moments wrapt in consciousness
Of triumph that was not, sate Astrophel:
He felt the laurel leaves, and heard the award;
The fit of inspiration was poured forth,
The crowning effort made.
Then suddenly
He ceased to hear; thought bodied darker shades:
Even on the wings of inspiration borne,
He felt two spirits in him lived; the one
Apart, indwelling but unraised, remote
From perturbation, unreflected still,
And the calm presence of a holier life.
Like the great Florentine, he had revealed
Material demigods in strength reposed
On the right arms of their sublimity.
And then his being lowered as beneath
The expectancy of coming ill. He felt
Silence creep through the crowd like the fine air
Along the shivering leaves of the stilled woods,
Or as o'er nature's face the sun o'ercast,
When the inaudible breathings of the storm
Are felt, ere seen the cloud-robed potentate.
He turned, and saw above the sea of heads,
Whose eyes upraised were centred upon him,
His lyric rival, Auriol of the West.
He rose as one who on himself relied,
Even in his rising was an utterance felt,
Foreshadowing art; the motion of the bark
Emerging from its shadows, ere unfurled
The spread of its expanding wings. He stood
Motionless as a cloud when silvered o'er
With the sun's heavenly alchymy.
His regard
Silence imposed, while its calm impress drew
Reluctant homage to a claim unmade.
Steadfast his eye, and lighted with a ray
That owned no planetary restlessness;
The intuition and the vision that saw
Its end of thought, the consciousness of words
Of music steeped in fancy's subtlest hues,
Playing, or lightly dallying with the song,
As butterflies with the unfolding flower.
A shade of scorn less visible than felt
Dwelt round his lips, preluding victory.
Averted eyes returned to Astrophel.
It was a face that fixed the arrested eye,
Till the mind shared the feeling that it gave,
A sense oppressed yet undefined. Upon
That countenance sat the spirit that revealed
Its inmost thought, the visor thrown aside
By self-respect that sate upon his brow
Where life was stamped as one soliloquy;
The visible mind that yearned to tell its thought;
The spirit that delved into the roots of life,
And knew the fruitage of the knowledge tree.
Unconscious of the gaze on him, his eyes
Upon the Lyrist turned, as he would look
Into his soul, and then the shadows grew
That bodied into form. He saw in thought,
Even as himself the immortal triumvir,
Conscious that fortune crowned the Augustan head.
In those first accents weighed and measured forth,
He read design that nothing left to chance,
Or breath of aspiration rising on
Enforced pinions.
Gazing on him thus,
Again the vision rose before his eyes,
Foreshadowing the present. He beheld
Ulysses rise to claim Achillean mail;
The panoply he could not bear when won.
Behind him stood in sullen shade apart,
Material Ajax of the sevenfold shield;
Shown by the gleam flashed from those fulgent arms
On his averted brow. The vision passed;
Again he heard that penetrating voice
Instilling the repose whence grew the power,
Felt o'er the thunder of the parted storm.
Then darker grew the mantle folding him;
Deeper and sterner shadows gathering round,
Slowly upheaved, revealing him of old,
Great Zeus as in immortal vision seen
By him, the sightless seer of Scio's Isle;
In vain the banded gods grasped from beneath
The golden chain to drag him from his throne;
They failed, they fell; then forth he sprang, the seer
Of that great dream, transformed into the foe;
He reeled before him vanquished; even he,
The Titan, with the thunder cloven deep
Within his aweless forehead.
The cloud passed,
The present rose, the hall, the multitude
The faces riveted upon the one.
It was a tale of life domestic told;
Familiar lights and shadows of the hour,
Of joy, of sorrow, or of suffering,
Woven in subtlest phrase, till films of thought,
Or fancies floating erewhile upon air,
Became as palpable realities.
The record told of woman's hopes and fears,
The young heart vibrating to life and sense
Of apprehensive being, the first love,
The opening and growth of its young birth
Pure as ethereal dews, the folding leaves
Of the closed flower, the thrill of happiness
Cherished, and veiled as from an ill unknown;
The Voice heard in the garden-paradise
Ere plucked the fruit, the growth and blossoming,
And emanation from the soul borne on,
Absorbed and blended with another's life.
Then, with a hand restrained by art, as one
Distrusting power, he struck on deeper chords;
The jealousy, the passion, and the grief,
The thought retiring, and the purpose veiled
Of hatred and revenge; then, less assured,
Confessions of despair.
Thus, listening,
Astrophel sate, conscious of many eyes
Gathered on one. He felt the bow was bent
That foiled the suitors, the winged arrow flown,
And the prize won by art. Meanwhile the lay
Embodied elfin fancies, till he saw
The graces floating round the verse that found
Its echoes in the depths of woman's heart.
He heard the crowd no more, nor saw the rays
Centring upon the fortunate. He turned
Toward the walls of that old hall, o'erhung
With portraits of the dead, obscured or dimmed
On faded canvas: chiefs of stricken fields,
Whose mortal god was honour; sages grey,
Whose souls were pilgrims after truth unfound;
Poets, with crowning wreaths upon their brows,
The elder born of time; and they, the less,
Who in the laurel grasped a wreath of flame,
They in whose bosoms dwelt the god, who died
Their glorious inspirations unrevealed.
Each had his joy and suffering, each proved
Repulse and triumph; the ordeal was o'er;
But they had won their crowns and passed away,
Their end of life fulfilled, their records graven
On cliffs that mocked the storms and floods of time;
The ebb and flow of a humanity
For ever surging round them. Success looked
From their high foreheads; they had left on earth
Their settled rays of immortality;
Their lamps were hung around Fame's altar-place,
Fed with the oil of everlasting truth.
There stood the Comus whose so potent wand
Had drawn believers erewhile faithful; he
Who with his delicate and subtle art
Had steeped the sense in dreams of grief or joy.
Then rose the chorus of exulting sounds
Whose faintest note was victory. He heard
The vital recognition that is given,
When the great popular heart reveals its life,
Responding as the rays of morning-light
To the Memnonian lyre.
They that erewhile
The victor owned were stilled; they had forgot
The power that bore them heavenward, that left
The mantle on their souls now fall'n to earth
Unraised and unrecalled; the rising sun
Mellowed the darkness of that thunder-cloud,
Until the image of the beautiful
Was mirrored on each bosom.
The song ceased,
But, ceasing, the low notes in each deep tone
Were as the voices of the stilly brook,
Heard from the depths of mountain solitudes.
Art matched itself with strength, prevailing still;
The Achillean panoply was won,
And Ajax fell upon his sevenfold shield.
No more he listened, conscious of the event.
He felt the branches of his inmost life
Thrill with the shadows of the passing storm
That had o'erthrown him; he bowed down to it,
Even as the oak upon the mountain top,
Rent, but unconquered still.
What marvel he
Abstracted stood, with his soul tempest-tossed?
The whirlwind loosened that through life had slept? —
Convulsion heaved from depths till now so stilled? —
Shadows of passions bodied round him rose,
White-lipped revenge that would annihilate
The thing that crossed his path; heart-withering scorn,
The jealousy with arm upraised, whose wrath
Should hurl to dust that yet unlaurelled head?
What marvel? happiness rests on its hope;
His was a life passed into poetry,
Become as one with him. And now the past,
And prescient future dreaming things to come,
Conquest and triumph, and time-honoured age,
Melted from his strong grasp, and in an hour.
He woke — he was — truth flashed across his soul
From self-forged lightnings. Could it be, he foiled?
Whose life had realised the poet's dream?
He who on mountain tops had gathered power
Till now unfailing? — who had drawn his strength
From nature; who had loved her aspect more
In grandeur than in beauty. The grey heath,
The rock, the pale lips of the wrathful Sea,
And stormier sunsets had inspired in him
Their elemental energies, that passed
Into his soul and left their image there.
Rather a Titan live in solitudes,
Than Sybarite of softer forms and hues;
Rather a watcher of the rushing storm,
Feeding its strength, than the reflecting stream
Glassing repose within its passionless breast.
His converse had been with the seers of song
Until their spirits blended with his own;
He who had fathomed passions imaged not
By dreamers, the perturbing chords that wake
Ambition, love, hate, triumph, and despair.
The shadowy wreath dropped from his head: he traced
The visible scroll of fate upon the wall,
That power had gone from him.
The pageant passed
Into a shadow and a memory,
The record of ovation that had been.
The victor felt the crown upon his brows,
The vanquished saw his own within the dust.
Rocklike he sat in that now echoless hall,
And gathered strength from his abandonment;
The tides had ebbed and left its base revealed.
And there he sate like Marius among
The ruins of his mind, evoking powers
Within; the imaginative faculty
Conscious of deathless being; hope and faith,
And self-respect that folds her mantle round,
And falls with dignity. And then he turned
To her, the holiest spirit raised by man,
The cinerary urn upon her head,
Humility; they wakened as from sleep,
And that great summons answered.
Nought endures
Of human suffering; spiritual throes
Expire; brands deepest stamped within the form,
Or seared upon the heart, pass on, and leave
No memory behind. The crown of thorns,
The sweat of blood, the cross of agony,
Is borne but for the hour; change, cloud-like, sits
Upon Duration's everlasting brow.
But in those moments brief he deemed he felt
The ineradicable wound that owned
No sedative of time. What deepened it,
Unmarked else, or unfelt? what stamped within
The indelible pang? The guardian of his life
Had watched that idlest foil. But now he stood,
Passion o'erruled, a sovereign in that hall;
He turned to her in thought, the living Muse,
Whose eyes had dwelt on him while he poured forth
Confession which she knew.
Perchance she felt
The perturbation of the song; the swell
And torrent of its power from her grew,
The tutelary Spirit of his soul.
She saw the rival, owned the spell of art;
Tissues of words inwoven into hues
That lived upon the eye of phantasy.
She heard not the award, passed from the crowd,
Even as the dewdrop melted from the boughs
Before the ascending sun. He saw her form
Retreating, and the gleam of her white robe
Through darker masses, as pale lightning seen
Through distant thunderclouds. Even in the song,
His conscious spirit felt departed power;
The tide in shallows lapsed that bore him on
The intuition dimmed; forms, half-raised, passed,
In their appearance vanishing. He saw
Visible Fortune leave him; friends, erewhile
His own, had fallen away; the scales were weighed
And found him wanting, Hebe's self had fled;
Even in that strife her eyes drew Astrophel
To follow her, abandoning the wreath
For a prize dearer to his heart than fame.
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