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XX

Scene⁠—Home. Festus, and Helen at her piano.⁠—Dusk.

Helen

I cannot live away from thee. How can

A flower live without its root?

Festus

I, too,

Must love or die.

Helen

But I must have. Attend!

I am to say and do just as I please;

I may command thee, may I? that I will.

Festus

I love to be enslaved. Oh! I would rather

Obey thee, beauty! than rule men by millions.

Helen

Near, as afar, I will have love the same⁠—

With a bright sameness, like this diamond,

Which, wherever the light be, shines like bright.

And thou shalt say all sorts of pretty things

To me; mind, to me only: write love-songs

About me, and I will sing them to myself;

Perhaps to thee, sometime, as it were now,

If I should happen to be very kind.

Festus

Sing now!

Helen

No!

Festus

Tyrant! I will banish thee.

Helen

Nay, if to sing and play would please thee, I

Would die to music. It was very wrong

To say I would deny thee anything;

But be not angry with me: for though God

Forgave me, I could ne’er forgive myself,

If I brought sorrow to thee, could I love?

Festus

As thou art empress of my bosom, No!

Helen

Nought fear I but an unkind word from thee.

Dark death may frighten children, Hell the wretch

Who feels that he deserves it; but for me,

I know I cannot do nor say aught worthy

Of the pure pain a frown of thine can cause,

Or a cold, careless look. No! never frown.

If I do wrong, forgive me, or I die;

And thou wilt then be wretcheder than I;⁠—

The unforgiving than the unforgiven.

Festus

I do absolve thee, beauty, of all faults,

Past, present, or to come.

Helen

Well, that will do.

What was I saying? I love this instrument,

It speaks, it thinks⁠—nay, I could kiss it: look!

There are three things I love half killingly;⁠—

Thee lastly, and this next, and myself first.

Festus

Thou art a silly, tiresome thing, and yet

I never weary of thee; but could gaze,

Sick with excess and not satiety,

Upon thy countenance, with the serious joy

With which we eye and eye the unbounded space

Which is the visible attribute of God,

Who makes all things within Himself; and thus

It is the Heaven we hope for, and can find

No point from which to take its altitude;

For the Infinite, is upwards, and above

The highest thing created⁠—upwards aye:

So I could, thinking on thy face, believe

An infinite expression, heightening still

The longer that I thought, and leaving thee,

Coming to thee, or being with thee⁠—love!

Helen

I am so happy when with thee.

Festus

And I.

They tell us virtue lies in self-denial.

My virtue is indulgence. I was born

To gratify myself unboundedly,

So that I wronged none else. These arms were given me

To clasp the beautiful, and cleave the wave;

These limbs to leap and wander where I will;

These eyes to look on every thing without

Effort; these ears to list my loved one’s voice;

These lips to be divinised by her kiss:

And every sense, pulse, passion, power, to be

Swoln into sunny ripeness.

Helen

Virtue is one

With nature, or ’tis nothing: it is love.

Festus

I come fresh from thee every time we meet,

Steeped in the still sweet dew of thy soft beauty,

Like earth at day-dawn, lifting up her head

Out of her sleep, star-watched, to face the sun⁠—

So I, to front the world, on leaving thee.

Oh! there is inspiration in thy look;

Poesie, prophecy. Come hither, love;

The evening air is sweet.

Helen

It comes on us

Fresher and clearer through these dewy vine-leaves,

Fit for the forehead of the young wine-god.

Festus

A large, red egg, of light the moon lies like

On the dark moor-hill and now, rising slow,

Beams on the clear flood, smilingly intent,

Like a fair face, which loves to look on itself,

Saying;⁠—“There is no wonder that men love me,

For I am beautiful!”⁠—as I heard thee.

Helen

It was not right to overhear me that.

Festus

’Twas very wrong to do what I could not help;

But vanity speaks out.

Helen

Well, I don’t mind;

I never knew that I was as I am

Till others told me.

Festus

Now were soon enough.

Helen

Ah, nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow.

Festus

For all were happiness, if all might live

Long, or die soon, enough: for even us.

Helen

Dost not remember, when, the other eve,

Thy friend the student called, there was a tale

Upon thy tongue he interrupted?

Festus

Was there?⁠—

Helen

A tale out of the poets, about love,

And happiness and sorrow, and such things.

Festus

But I forget such things when thou art by.

Besides, I asked him here again, to-night,

Here, at this hour; and he is punctual.

Helen

In truth, then, I despair of hearing it.

He keeps his word relentlessly. With not

More pride an Indian shows his foeman’s scalp

Than he his watch for punctuality.

Festus

But tales of love are far more readily

Made than remembered.

Helen

Tell-tale, make one, then.

Festus

Love is the art of hearts and heart of arts.

Conjunctive looks and interjectional sighs

Are its vocabulary’s greater half.

Well then, my story says, there was a pair

Of Lovers, once⁠—

Helen

Once! nay, how singular!

Festus

But where they lived indeed I quite forget;⁠—

Say anywhere⁠—say here: their names were⁠—I

Forget those, too; say any one’s, say ours.

Helen

Most probable, most pertinent, so far!

Festus

The lady was, of course, most beautiful,

And made her lover do just as she pleased;

And consequently, he did very wrong.

They met, sang, walked, talked folly, just as all

Such couples do, adored each other; thought,

Spoke, wrote, dreamed of and for nought on earth

Except themselves; and so on.

Helen

Pray proceed!⁠—

Festus

That’s all;

Helen

Oh, no!

Festus

Well, thus the tale ends; stay!

No, I cannot remember nor invent.

Helen

Do think!

Festus

I can’t.

Helen

Oh then, I don’t like that:

’Tis not in earnest.

Festus

Well, in earnest, then.

She did but look upon him, and his blood

Blushed deeper even from his inmost heart;

For at each glance of those sweet eyes a soul

Looked forth as from the azure gates of Heaven;

She laid her finger on him, and he felt

As might a formless mass of marble feel

While feature after feature of a god

Were being wrought from out of it. She spake,

And his love-wildered and idolatrous soul

Clung to the airy music of her words,

Like a bird on a bough, high swaying in the wind.

He looked upon her beauty and forgot,

As in a sense of drowning, all things else;

And right and wrong seemed one, seemed nothing she

Was beauty, and that beauty everything.

He looked upon her as the sun on earth:

Until, like him, he gazed himself away

From Heaven so doing till he even wept⁠—

Wept on her bosom as a storm-charged cloud

Weeps itself out upon a hill, and cried⁠—

I, too, could look on thee until I wept⁠—

Blind me with kisses! let me look no longer;

Or change the action of thy loveliness,

Lest long same-seemingness should send me mad!⁠—

Blind me with kisses; I would ruin sight

To give its virtue to thy lips, whereon

I would die now, or ever live; and she,

Soft as a feather-footed cloud on Heaven,

While her sad face grew bright like night with stars,

Would turn her brow to his and both be happy;⁠—

Numbered among the constellations they!⁠—

Then as tired wanderer, snow-blinded, sinks

And swoons upon the swelling drift, and dies,

So on her dazzling bosom would he lay

His famished lips, and end their travels there.

Oh, happy they! not he would go to Heaven,

Not, though he might that moment.

Helen

Nor I now.

Festus

Helen, my love!

Helen

Yes, I am here.

Festus

It has

Been such a day as that, thou knowest, when first

I said I loved thee; that long, sunny day

We passed upon the waters⁠—heeding nought,

Seeing nought but each other.

Helen

I remember.

The only wise thing that I ever did⁠—

The only good, was to love thee, and therefore

I would have no one else as wise as I,

Didst thou not say that student would be here?

Festus

I think I hear him every minute come.

Helen

It is not kind. We should be more alone.

There was a time thou wouldst have no one else.

Festus

Am I not with thee all day?

Helen

Yes, I know;

But often and often thou art thinking not

Of me.

Festus

My good child!⁠—

Helen

Well, I know thou lovest me;

And so I cannot bear thee to think, speak,

Or be with any but me.

Festus

Then I will not.

Helen

Oh, thou wouldst promise me the clock round. Now,

Promise me this⁠—that I shall never die,

And I’ll believe thee when I am dead⁠—not till.

But let it pass. I am at peace with thee;

And pardon thee, and give thee leave to live.

Festus

Magnanimous!

Helen

When earth, and Heaven, and all

Things seem so bright and lovely for our sakes,

It is a sin not to be happy. See,

The moon is up, it is the dawn of night.

Stands by her side one bold, bright, steady star⁠—

Star of her heart, and heir to all her light,

Whereon she looks so proudly mild and calm,

As though she were the mother of that star,

And knew he was a chief sun in his sphere,

But by her side, in the great strife of lights

To shine to God, he had filially failed,

And hid his arrows and his bow of beams.

Mother of stars! the Heavens look up to thee.

They shine the brighter but to hide thy waning;

They wait and wane for thee to enlarge thy beauty;

They give thee all their glory night by night;

Their number makes not less thy loneliness

Nor loveliness.

Festus

Heaven’s beauty grows on us;

And when the elder worlds have ta’en their seats,

Come the divine ones, gathering one by one,

And family by family, with still

And holy air, into the house of God⁠—

The house of light He hath builded for Himself,

And worship Him in silence and in sadness,

Immortal and immovable. And there,

Night after night, they meet to worship God.

For us this witness of the worlds is given,

That we may add ourselves to their great glory,

And worship with them. They are there for lights

To light us on our way through Heaven to God;

And we, too, have the power of light in us.

Ye stars, how bright ye shine, to night; mayhap

Ye are the resurrection of the worlds⁠—

Glorified globes of light! Shall ours be like ye?

Nay, but it is! this wild, dark earth of ours,

Whose face is furrowed like a losing gamester’s,

Is shining round, and bright, and smooth in air,

Millions of miles off. Not a single path

Of thought I tread, but that it leads to God.

And when her time is out, and earth again

Hath travailed with the divine dust of man,

Then the world’s womb shall open, and her sons

Be born again, all glorified immortals.

And she, their mother, purified by fire,

Shall sit her down in Heaven, a bride of God,

And handmaid of the Everbeing One.

Our earth is learning all accomplishments

To fit her for her bridehood.

Helen

He is here.

Festus

Welcome.

Student

I thought the night was beautiful,

But find the in-door scene still lovelier.

Helen

Ah! all is beautiful where beauty is.

Student

Night hath made many bards; she is so lovely.

For it is beauty maketh poesie,

As from the dancing eye comes tears of light.

Night bath made many bards; she is so lovely.

And they have praised her to her starry face

So long, that she hath blushed and left them, often.

When first and last we met, we talked on studies;

Poetry only I confess is mine,

And is the only thing I think or read of:⁠—

Feeding my soul upon the soft, and sweet,

And delicate imaginings of song;

For as nightingales do upon glow-worms feed,

So poets live upon the living light

Of nature and of beauty; they love light.

Festus

Bat poetry is not confined to books.

For the creative spirit which thou seekest

Is in thee, and about thee; yea, it hath

God’s everywhereness.

Student

Truly. It was for this

I sought to know thy thoughts, and hear the course

Thou wouldst lay out for one who longs to win

A name among the nations.

Festus

First of all,

Care not about the name, but bind thyself,

Body and soul, to nature, hiddenly.

Lo, the great march of stars from earth to earth,

Through Heaven. The earth speaks inwardly alone.

Let no man know thy business, save some friend⁠—

A man of mind, above the run of men;

For it is with, all men and with all things.

The bard must have a kind, courageous heart,

And natural chivalry to aid the weak.

He must believe the best of everything;

Love all below, and worship all above.

All animals are living hieroglyphs.

The dashing dog, and stealthy-stepping cat,

Hawk, bull, and all that breathe, mean something more

To the true eye than their shapes show; for all

Were made in love, and made to be beloved.

Thus must he think as to earth’s lower life,

Who seeks to win the world to thought and love,

As doth the bard, whose habit is all kindness

To every thing.

Helen

I love to hear of such.

Could we but think with the intensity

We love with, we might do great things, I think.

Festus

Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life

But needs it and may learn; eye-reasoning man,

And spirit unassisted, unobscured.

Student

Go on, I pray. I came to be informed.

Thou knowest my ambition, and I joy

To feel thou feedest it with purest food.

Festus

I cannot tell thee all I feel; and know

But little save myself, and am not ashamed

To say, that I have studied my own life,

And know it is like to a tear-blistered letter,

Which holdeth fruit and proof of deeper feeling

Than the poor pen can utter, or the eye

Discover; and that often my heart’s thoughts

Will rise and shake my breast as madmen shake

The stanchions of their dungeons, and howl out.

Helen

But thou wast telling us of poesie,

And the kind nature-hearted bards.

Festus

I was.

I knew one once⁠—he was a friend of mine;

I knew him well; his mind, habits, and works,

Taste, temper, temperament, and every thing;

Yet with as kind a heart as ever beat,

He was no sooner made than marred. Though young,

He wrote amid the ruins of his heart;

They were his throne and theme;⁠—like some lone king,

Who tells the story of the land he lost,

And how he lost it.

Student

Tell us more of him.

Helen

Nay, but it saddens thee.

Festus

’Tis like enough;

We slip away like shadows into shade;

We end, and make no mark we had begun;

We come to nothing, like a pure intent.

When we have hoped, sought, striven, and lost our aim,

Then the truth fronts us, beaming out of darkness,

Like a white brow, through its overshadowing hair⁠—

As though the day were overcast, my Helen!

But I was speaking of my friend. He was

Quick, generous, simple, obstinate in end,

High-hearted from his youth; his spirit rose

In many a glittering fold and gleamy crest,

Hydra-like to its hindrance; mastering all,

Save one thing⁠—love, and that out-hearted him.

Nor did he think enough, till it was over,

How bright a thing he was breaking, or he would

Surely have shunned it, nor have let his life

Be pulled to pieces like a rose by a child;

And his heart’s passions made him oft do that

Which made him writhe to think on what he had done,

And thin his blood by weeping at a night.

If madness wrought the sin, the sin wrought madness,

And made a round of ruin. It is sad

To see the light of beauty wane away,

Know eyes are dimming, bosom shrivelling, feet

Losing their spring, and limbs their lily roundness;

But it is worse to feel our heart-spring gone,

To lose hope, care not for the coming thing,

And feel all things go to decay with us,

As ’twere our life’s eleventh month: and yet

All this he went through young.

Helen

Poor soul! I should

Have loved him for his sorrows.

Festus

It is not love

Brings sorrow, but love’s objects.

Student

Then he loved.

Festus

I said so. I have seen him when he hath had

A letter from his lady dear, he blessed

The paper that her hand had travelled over,

And her eye looked on, and would think he saw

Gleams of that light she lavished from her eyes

Wandering amid the words of love there traced

Like glow-worms among beds of flowers. He seemed

To bear with being but because she loved him,

She was the sheath wherein his soul had rest,

As hath a sword from war: and he at night

Would solemnly and singularly curse

Each minute that he had not thought of her.

Helen

Now that was like a lover! and she loved

Him, and him only.

Festus

Well, perhaps it was so.

But he could not restrain his heart, but loved

In that voluptuous purity of taste

Which dwells on beauty coldly, and yet kindly,

As night-dew, whensoe’er he met with beauty.

Helen

It was a pity, that inconstancy⁠—

If she he loved were but as good and fair

As he was worthy of.

Student

It was his way.

Festus

There is a dark and bright to every thing;

To every thing but beauty such as thine,

And that is all bright. If a fault in him,

’Twas one which made him do the sweetest wrongs

Man ever did. And yet a whisper went

That he did wrong: and if that whisper had

Echo in him or not, it mattered little;

Or right or wrong, he were alike unhappy.

Ah me! ah me! that there should be so much

To call up love, so little to delight!

The best enjoyment is half disappointment

To that we mean or would have in this world.

And there were many strange and sudden lights

Beckoned him towards them; they were wreckers’ lights:

But he shunned these, and righted when she rose,

Moon of his life, that ebbed and flowed with her.

A sea of sorrow struck him, but he held

On; dashed all sorrow from him as a bark

Spray from her bow bounding; he lifted up

His head, and the deep ate his shadow merely.

Helen

A poet not in love is out at sea;

He must have a lay-flgure.

Festus

I meant not

To screen, but to describe this friend of mine.

Helen

Describe the lady, too; of course she was

Above all praise and all comparison.

Festus

Why, true. Her heart was all humanity,

Her soul all God’s; in spirit and in form,

Like fair. Her cheek had the pale pearly pink

Of seashells, the world’s sweetest tint, as though

She lived, one half might deem, on roses sopped

In silver dew; she spake as with the voice

Of spheral harmony which greets the soul

When at the hour of death the saved one knows

His sister angels near; her eye was as

The golden pane the setting sun doth just

Imblaze; which shows, till Heaven comes down again,

All other lights but grades of gloom; her dark,

Long rolling locks were as a stream the slave

Might search for gold, and searching find.

Helen

Enough!⁠—

I have her picture perfect;⁠—quite enough.

Student

What were his griefs?

Festus

He who hath most of heart

Knows most of sorrow; not a thing he saw

Nor did, but was to him, at times, a woe;

At times indifferent, at times a joy.

Folly and sin and memory make a curse

Wherewith the future fires may vie in vain.

The sorrows of the soul are graver still.

Student

Where and when did he study? Did he mix

Much with the world, or was he a recluse?

Festus

He had no times of study, and no place;

All places and all times to him were one.

His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved,

And sounded only when the spirit blew.

Sometime in feasts and follies, for he went

Life-like through all things; and his thoughts then rose

Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still.

Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words

Would wake him in the dark before his face.

All things talked thoughts to him. The sea went mad,

And the wind whined as ’twere in pain, to show

Each one his meaning; and the awful sun

Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night

The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers.

The spirit speaks all tongues and understands;

Both God’s and angel’s, man’s and all dumb things,

Down to an insect’s inarticulate hum

And an inaudible organ. And it was

The spirit spake to him of everything;

And with the moony eyes like those we see,

Thousands on thousands, crowding air in dreams,

Looked into him its mighty meanings, till

He felt the power fulfil him, as a cloud

In every fibre feels the forming wind.

He spake the world’s one tongue; in earth and Heaven

There is but one, it is the word of truth.

To him the eye let out its hidden meaning;

And young and old made their hearts over to him;

And thoughts were told to him as unto none

Save one who heareth said and unsaid, all.

And his heart held these as a grate its gleeds,

Where others warm them.

Student

I would I had known him.

Festus

All things were inspiration unto him;

Wood, wold, hill, field, sea, city, solitude,

And crowds and streets, and man where’er he was;

And the blue eye of God which is above us;

Brook-bounded pine spinnies where spirits flit:

And haunted pits the rustic hurries by,

Where cold wet ghosts sit ringing jingling bells;

Old orchards’ leaf-roofed aisles, and red cheeked load;

And the blood-coloured tears which yew trees weep

O’er churchyard graves, like murderers remorseful.

The dark green rings where fairies sit and sup,

Crushing the violet dew in the acorn cup:

Where by his new-made bride the bride-groom sips,

The white moon shimmering on their longing lips;

The large o’erloaded wealthy-looking wains

Quietly swaggering home through leafy lanes,

Leaving on all low branches as they come,

Straws for the birds, ears of the harvest home.

Summer’s warm soil or winter’s cruel sky,

Clear, cold and icy-blue like a sea-eagle’s eye;

All things to Him bare thoughts of minstrelsy,

He drew his light from that he was amidst,

As doth a lamp from air which hath itself

Matter of light although it show it not. His

Was but the power to light what might be lit.

He met a muse in every lovely maid;

And learned a song from every lip he loved.

But his heart ripened most ’neath southern eyes,

Which sunned their sweets into him all day long:

For fortune called him southwards, towards the sun.

Helen

Did he love music?

Festus

The only music he

Or learned or listened to was from the lips

Of her he loved, and that he learned by heart.

Albeit, she would try to teach him tunes,

And put his fingers on the keys; but he

Could only see her eyes, and hear her voice,

And feel her touch.

Helen

Why, he was much like thee.

Festus

We had some points in common.

Student

Was he proud?

Festus

Lowliness is the base of every virtue:

And he who goes the lowest, builds the safest.

My God keeps all his pity for the proud.

Student

Was he world-wise?

Festus

The only wonder is

He knew so much, leading the life he did.

Student

Yet it may seem less strange when we think back,

That we, in the dark chamber of the heart,

Sitting alone, see the world tabled to us;

And the world wonders how recluses know

So much, and most of all, how we know them.

It is they who paint themselves upon our hearts

In their own lights and darknesses, not we.

One stream of light is to us from above,

And that is that we see by, light of God.

Festus

We do not make our thoughts; they grow in us

Like grain in wood: the growth is of the skies,

Which are of nature, nature is of God.

The world is full of glorious liknesses.

The poet’s power is to sort these out,

And to make music from the common strings

With which the world is strung; to make the dumb

Earth utter heavenly harmony, and draw

Life clear and sweet and harmless as spring water,

Welling its way through flowers. Without faith,

Illimitable faith, strong as a state’s

In its own might, in God, no bard can be.

All things are signs of other and of nature.

It is at night we see heaven moveth, and

A darkness thick with suns. The thoughts we think

Subsist, the same in God as stars in Heaven.

And as these specks of light will prove great worlds

When we approach them sometime free from flesh,

So too our thoughts will become magnified

To mind-like things immortal. And as space

Is but a property of God, wherein

Is laid all matter, other attributes

May be the infinite homes of mind and soul.

And thoughts rise from our souls, as from the sea

The clouds sublimed in Heaven. The cloud is cold,

Although ablaze with lightning⁠—though it shine

At all points like a constellation; so

We live not to ourselves, our work is life;

In bright end ceaseless labor as a star

Which shineth unto all worlds, but itself.

Helen

And were this friend and bard of whom thou speakest,

And she whom he did love, happy together?

Festus

True love is ever tragic, grievous, grave.

Bards and their beauties are like double stars,

One in their bright effect.

Helen

Whose light is love.

Student

Or is it poesie thou meanest?

Festus

Both:

For love is poesie⁠—it doth create;

From fading features, dim soul, doubtful heart,

And this world’s wretched happiness, a life

Which is as near to Heaven as are the stars.

They parted; and she named Heaven’s judgment-seat

As their next place of meeting: and ’twas kept

By her, at least, so far that no where else

Could it be made until the day of doom.

Helen

So soon men’s passion passes! yea, it sinks

Like foam into the troubled wave which bore it.

Merciful God! let me entreat Thy mercy!

I have seen all the woes of men⁠—pain, death,

Remorse, and worldy ruin; they are little

Weighed with the woe of woman when forsaken

By him she loved and trusted. Hear, too, thou!

Lady of Heaven, Mother of God and man,

Who made the world His brother, one with God⁠—

Maid-mother! mould of God, who wrought in thee

By model as He doth in the world’s womb,

So that the universe is great with God⁠—

Thou in whom God did deify Himself,

Betaking him into mortality,

As in Thy Son He took it into Him,

And from the temporal and eternal made

Of the soul-world one same and ever God!

Oh, for the sake of thine own womanhood,

Pray away aught of evil from her soul,

And take her out of anguish unto thee,

Always, as thou didst this one!

Festus

Who doth not

Believe that lat he loveth cannot die?

There is no mote of death in thine eye’s beams

To hint of dust, or darkness, or decay;

Eclipse upon eclipse, and death on death;

No! immortality sits mirrored there

Like a fair face long looking on itself;

Yet thou shalt lie in death’s angelic garb

As in a dream of dress, my beautiful!

The worm shall trail across thine unsunned sweets,

And fatten him on that men pined to death for;

Yea, have a further knowledge of thy beauties

Than ever did thy best-loved lover dream of.

Helen

It is unkind to think of me in this wise.

Surely the stars must feel that they are bright,

In beauty, number, nature infinite;

And the strong sense we have of God in us

Makes me believe my soul can never cease.

The temples perish, but the God still lives.

Festus

It is therefore that I love thee; for that when

The fiery perfection of the world,

The sun, shall be a shadow and burnt out,

There is an impulse to eternity

Raised by this moment’s love.

Student

I pray it may!

Time is the crescent shape to bounded eye

Of what is ever perfect unto God.

The bosom heaves to Heaven and to the stars;

Our very hearts throb upwards, our eyes look;

Our aspirations always are divine:

Yet is it in the gloom of soul we see

Most of the God about us, as at night.

For then the soul, like the mother-maid of Christ,

Is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit;

And in Creative darkness doth conceive

Its humanized Divinity of life.

Festus

Think then God shows his face to us no less

In spiritual darkness than in light.

Helen

But of thy friend? I would hear more of him.

Perhaps much happiness in friendship made

Amends for his love’s sorrows.

Festus

Ask me not.

Helen

But loved he never after? Came there none

To roll the stone from his sepulchral heart,

And sit in it an angel?

Festus

Ah, my life!

My more than life, my immortality!

Both man and kind belie their nature

When they are not kind: and thy words are kind,

And beautiful, and loving like thyself;

Thine eye and thy tongue’s tone, and all that speak

Thy soul, are like it. There’s a something in

The shape of harps as though they had been made

By music: beauty’s the effect of soul,

And he of whom thou askest loved again.

Could’st thou have loved one who was unlike men?

Whose heart was wrinkled long before his brow?

Who would have cursed himself if he had dared

Tempt God to ratify his curse in fire:

And yet with whom to look on beauty was

A need, a thirst, a passion?

Helen

Yes, I think

I could have loved him: but, no⁠—not unless

He was like thee; unless he had been thee.

Tell me, what was it rendered him so wretched

At heart?

Festus

I will not tell thee.

Student

But tell me

How and on what he wrote, this friend of thine?

Festus

Love, mirth, woe, pleasure, was in tum his theme,

And the great good which beauty does the soul;

And the God-made necessity of things.

And like that noble knight in olden tale,

Who changed his armour’s hue at each fresh charge

By virtue of his lady-love’s strange ring,

So that none knew him save his private page

And she who cried, God save him, every time

He brake spears with the brave till he quelled all⁠—

So he applied him to all themes that came;

Loving the most to breast the rapid deeps

Where others had been drowned, and heeding nought

Where danger might not fill the place of fame.

And ’mid the magic circle of those sounds,

His lyre rayed out, spell-bound himself he stood,

Like a stilled storm. It is no task for suns

To shine. He knew himself a bard ordained,

More than inspired, of God, inspirited:⁠—

Making himself like an electric rod

A lure for lightning feelings; and his words

Felt like the things that fall in thunder, which

The mind, when in a dark, hot, cloudful state,

Doth make metallic, meteoric, ball like.

He spake to spirits with a spirit tongue,

Who came compelled by wizard word of truth,

And rayed them round him from the ends of Heaven.

For as be all bards he was born of beauty,

And with a natural fitness to draw down

All tones and shades of beauty to his soul,

Even as the rainbow-tinted shell, which lies

Miles deep at bottom of the sea, hath all

Colours of skies and flowers, and gems, and plumes,

And all by Nature which doth reproduce

Like loveliness in seeming opposites.

Our life is like the wizard’s charmed ring:

Death’s heads, and loathsome things fill up the ground;

But spirits wing about, and wait on us,

While yet the hour of enchantment is.

And while we keep in, we are safe, and can

Force them to do our bidding. And he raised

The rebel in himself, and in his mind

Walked with him through the world.

Student

He wrote of this?

Festus

He wrote a poem.

Student

What was said of it?

Festus

Oh, much was said⁠—much more than understood;

One said that he was mad; another, wise;

Another, wisely mad. The book is there.

Judge thou among them.

Student

Well, but, who said what?

Festus

Some said that he blasphemed; and these men lied

To all eternity, unless such men

Be saved, when God shall rase that lie from life,

And from His own eternal memory:

But still the word is lied; though it were writ

In honeydew upon a lily leaf,

With quill of nightingale, like love letters

From Oberon sent to the bright Titania,

Fairest of all the fays⁠—for that he used

The name of God as spirits use it, barely,

Yet surely more sublime in nakedness,

Statuelike, than in a whole tongue of dress.

Thou knowest, God! that to the full of worship

All things are worship-full; and Thy great name,

In all its awful brevity, hath nought

Unholy breeding in it, but doth bless

Rather the tongue that utters it; for me,

I ask no higher office than to fling

My spirit at Thy feet, and cry Thy name

God! through eternity. The man who sees

Irreverence in that name, must have been used

To take that name in vain, and the same man

Would see obscenity in pure white statues.

Call all things by their names. Hell, call thou hell;

Archangel, call archangel; and God, God.

Student

And what said he of such?

Festus

He held his peace

A season, as a tree its sap till spring,

Preparing to unfold itself, and let

All rigor do its worst, which only served

To harden him, though nothing nesh at first.

And then he said at last, what, at the first,

He deemed would have been seen by other men,

By men, at least, above low-water mark,

Who take it, they lead others; that it is they

Who set their shoulders to the stalled world’s wheel,

And give it a hitch forwards.

Helen

There were some

Encouraged him with goodwill, surely?

Festus

Many.

The kind, the noble, and the able cheered him;

The lovely, likewise: others knew he nought of.

And yet he loved not praise, nor sighed for fame.

Men’s praise begets an awe of one’s own self

Within us, till we fear our heart, lest it,

Magician-like, show more than we can bear.

Nor was he fameless; but obscurity

Hath many a sacred use. The clouds which hide

The mental mountains rising nighest Heaven,

Are full of finest lightning, and a breath

Can give those gathered shadows fearful life,

And launch their light in thunder o’er the world.

Student

And thought he well of that he wrote?

Festus

Perchance.

Perchance we suffer, and perchance succeed.

Perchance he would his tongue had perished ere

It uttered half he said, from childhood up

To manhood, and so on; for much I heard

From him required expiation, much

Soul sacrifice and penance for heart-deeds

Which passion had accomplished; yea, perchance,

He wished, how vain! that fruitful heart and breast

Had withered like a witch’s ere he had trained

The parasites of feeling that he did

About it; and perchance, for all I know,

He would his brain had died ere it conceived

One half the thought-seeds that took life in it,

And in his soul’s dark sanctuary dwelt.

Yet his blue eye’s dark ball grew greater with

Delight, and darker, as he viewed the things

He made; not monsters outside of the fane,

Grinning and howling, but seraphic forms⁠—

Embodied thoughts of worship, wisdom, love,

Joining their fire-tipped wings across the shrine

Where his heart’s relics lay, and where were wrought

Immortal miracles upon men’s minds.

Student

Take up the book, and, if thou understandest,

Unfold it to me.

Festus

What I can, I will.

Well I remember me of thee, poor book!

But there is consolation e’en for thee.

Fair hand have turned thee over, and bright eyes

Sprinkled their sparkles o’er thee with their prayers.

The poet’s pen is the true divining rod

Which trembles upwards the inner founts of feeling;

Bringing to light and use, else hid from all,

The many sweet clear sources which we have

Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms;

And marks the variations of all mind

As does the needle an air-investing storm’s.

Student

How does the book begin, go on and end?

Festus

It has a plan, but no plot. Life hath none.

Helen

Tell us, love; we will listen and not speak.

I wish I understood it, for I know

You would rather hear me than yourselves talk.

Student

Surely.

I’d give up half the organs in my head,

Besides all undiscovered faculties,

To list to such a lecturer; and then

Have quite enough, perhaps, to comprehend.

Helen

’Twere needless that, to one half-witted now.

Festus

There is a porch, wherefrom is something seen

Of the main dome beyond. Though shadows cross

Each other’s path, yet let us go through it.

And lo! an opening scene in Heaven, Wherein

The foredoom of all things, spirit and matter,

Is shown, and the permission of temptation;

The angelic worship of the Trinity,

By God’s name uttered thrice; the joys and powers

Of souls o’erblest, and the sweet offices

Of warden-angel told; and the complete

Well-fixed necessity and end of all things.

From Heaven we come to earth, and so do souls.

For next succeeds a soft and sunset scene,

Wherein is shown the collapsed, empty state

In which all worldly pleasures leave us; youth’s

Though natural, fitful, unavailing, struggle

Against a great temptation come unlocked for:

And that to sin is to curse God in deed.

The soul long used to truth still keeps its strength,

Though plunged upon a sudden mid the false;

As hands, thrust into a dark room, retain

Their sunlent light a season. So with this.

The lines have under meanings, and the scene

Of self-forgetfulness and indecision

Breaks off, not ends. A starry, stirless night

Follows, which shadows out youth’s barren longings

For goodness, greatness, marvels, mysteries.

Whence comes this dream of immortality,

And the resurgent essence? Let us think!

What mean we by the dead? The dead have life,

The changed; and, if they come, it is to show

Their change is for the better. The bait takes.

Man and his foe shake hands upon their bargain.

The youth sets out for joy, and ’neath the care

Of his good enemy, begins his course.

The next scene seems to promise fair; for sure

If that there be one scene in life, wherefrom

Evil is absent, it is pure early love.

Helen

Alas! when beauty pleads the cause of virtue

The chief temptation to embrace it’s wanting.

Festus

A man in love sees wonders. But not love

Makes the soul happy: so the youth gets hopeless.

To this comes on a stem and stormy quarrel

’Tween the two foe friends⁠—Youth demanding what

Cannot be; and the other withholding safe

And easy grants. They part and meet, as though

Nothing had happened, in the next scene: none

Know how we reconcile ourselves to evil.

But there they are, together, aiding each

The other, and abusing others.

Helen

I

Was waiting for an eloquential pause

In this mysterious, allegorical,

Mythical, theological, odd story.

So now, then, I shall ask myself to sing;

And granting I agree to my request,

I think you ought to thank me.

Student

That we will.

But not just now.

Helen

Oh! yes, now; yes, this moment

I’m in the humour.

Student

We are not.

Festus

Yes, let her!

Helen

What shall I sing?

Festus

Sing something merry, love.

Helen

I won’t: I’ll sing the dullest thing I know;

One of thine own songs.

Student

What a compliment!

Festus

Sing what thou lik’st, then.

Helen

No; what thou lik’st.

Student

Well,

Something about lore, and it can’t be wrong.

For love the sunny world supplies

With laughing lips and happy eyes.

Festus

And ’twill be sooner over.

Student

And so better.

Helen

Like an island in a river,

Art thou, my love, to me;

And I journey by thee ever

With a gentle ecstasie.

I arise to fall before thee;

I come to kiss thy feet;

To adorn thee and adore thee,

Mine only one! my sweet!

And thy love hath power upon me,

Like a dream upon a brain;

For the loveliness which won me,

With the love, too, doth remain.

And my life it beautifieth,

Though love be but a shade,

Known of only ere it dieth,

By the darkness it hath made.

Was that addressed to me?

Student

Well, now resume.

Festus

Trial alone of ill and folly gives

Gear proofs of the world’s vanities; but little

Good comes of sermons, prophecies, or warnings.

Though from the steps of an old grey market-cross,

The Devil is holding forth to the faithless. There

A social prayer is offered up, too. This

Is followed by a bird’s-eye view of earth,

A stirring-up of the dust of all the nations.

Then comes a village feast; a kind of home

Unto the traveller⁠—where, with the world,

We mix in private, talking divers things;

A country merry-making, where all speak

According to their sorts, and the occasion.

Deeper than ever leadline went, behold

We search the rayless central sun within.

We penetrate all mysteries, but are

Unfitted long to dwell in the recess

Of our own nature, and we long for light.

True aspiration riseth from research.

Next, by the o’erthrown altar of a fane,

Foundation-shattered, like the ripened heart,

We find ourselves in worship. Let us hope

The spirit, form, and offering, grateful all.

In one of Earth’s head cities, after this,

We tower-like rise, and with an eminent eye

Glance round society, insatiate;⁠—

The high unknown as yet unrealized.

In less time than the twinkling of a star,

Insphered in air, the arch-fiend and the youth,

Like twilight and midnight, discourse and rise.

Thence to another planet, for the book,

Stream-like doth steal the images of stars,

And trembles at its boldness, where we meet

The spirit of the first night of temptation;

And mix with many of those lofty musings

Which sow in us the seeds of higher kind

And brighter being. Heavenly poesie,

Which shines among the powers of our mind,

As that bright star she dwells in, mid the worlds

Which make the system of the sun, is there too.

But these high things are lost, and drowned, and dimmed,

Like a blue eye in tears, that trickle from it

Like angels leaving Heaven on their errands

Of love, behind them, in the scene succeeding;⁠—

A scene of song, and dance, and mirth, and wine,

And damsels, in whose lily skin the blue

Veins branch themselves in hidden luxury,

Hues of the heaven they seem to have vanished from.

Helen

Moonlight and music, and kisses, and wine,

And beauty, which must be, for rhyme-sake, divine.

Festus

Mere joys; but saddened and sublimed at close

By sweet remembrance of immortal ones

Once loved, aye hallowed. Still, in scenes like this,

Youth lingers longest, drawing out his time

As a gold-beater does his wire, until

’Twould reach round the earth.

Student

And be of no use then.

Festus

Blame not the bard for showing this, but mind

He wrote of youth as passionate genius,

Its flights and follies⁠—both its sensual ends

And common places. To behold an eagle

Batting the sunny ceiling of the world

With his dark wings, one well might deem his heart

On heaven; but, no! it is fixed on flesh and blood,

And soon his talons tell it. Pass we on!

A brief and solemn parley o’er a grave

Follows, in which youth vows to trust in God,

Be the end what it may. A prescient view

Of what is true repentance to the soul,

Spirit-informed, expands; and over all

The spiritual harmonies of Heaven

By the raised soul are heard, and God’s great rule

To creatures justified. And next we find

Ourselves in Heaven. Even man’s deadly life

Can be there, by God’s leave. Once brought to God,

The soul’s foredoom is set before it brightly,

And Heaven’s designs are seen to be brought to bear.

A lightning revelation of the Heavens,

And what is in them. Let it not be said

He sought his God in the self-slayer’s way,

Whose highest aim was but to worship in

All humbleness; for he was called thereto,

To show the holy God, in three scenes, first

And last in Threelihood, and midst in One:

Although less hard to shape the wide-winged wind

O’er the bright heights of air. He will forgive:

For we, this moment, and all living souls⁠—

All matter, are as much within his presence,

And known through, like a glass film in the sun,

As we can ever be. Through sundry worlds

The mortal wends, returning, and relates

To her he loves⁠—and joyously, they greet,

As boat by breeze and billow backed by tide⁠—

His bright experience of celestial homes;

Where spiritual natures, kind and high,

Light-born, which can divine immortal things,

Abide embosomed in Eternity.

Something he tells, too, of the friendly fiend,

Something of ancient ages, infant Earth.

To this succeeds a scene explaining much,

Of retrospective and prospective cast,

Between the bard his beauty and his friend.

Our story ties us here to earth again,

And sea all aged. Evil is in love;

And ever those who are unhappiest have

Their hearts desire the oftenest, but in dreams.

Dreams are mind-clouds, high, and unshapen beauties,

Or but God-shaped, like mountains, which contain

Much and rich matter; often not for us,

But for another. Dreams are rudiments

Of the great state to come. We dream what is

About to happen to us.

Helen

What may be

The dream in this case?

Festus

It is one of death.

Helen

Of death! is that all? Well, I too have had,

What every one hath once, at least, in life⁠—

A vision of the region of the dead;

It was the land of shadows: yea, the land

Itself was but a shadow, and the race

Which seemed therein were voices, forms of forms,

And echoes of themselves. And there was nought,

Of substance seemed, save one thing in the midst,

A great red sepulchre⁠—a granite grave;

And at the bottom lay a skeleton,

From whose decaying jaws the shades were born;

Making its only sign of life, its dying

Continually. Some were bright, some dark.

Those that were bright, went upwards heavenly.

They which were dark, grew darker and remained.

A land of change, yet did the half things nothing

That I could see; but passed stilly on,

Taking no note of other, mate or child;

For all had lost their love when they put off

The beauty of the body. And as I

Looked on, the grave before me backed away;

And I began to dream it was a dream;

And I rushed after it: when the earth quaked,

Opened and shut, like the eye of one in fits;

It shut to with a shout. The grave was gone.

And in the stead there stood a gleedlike throne,

Which all the shadows shook to see, and swooned;

For fiends were standing, loaded with long chains,

The links whereof were fire, waiting the word

To bind and cast the shadows into hell;

For Death the second sat upon that throne,

Which set on fire the air not to be breathed.

And as he lifted up his arm to speak,

Fear preyed upon all souls, like fire on paper,

And mine among the rest, and I awoke.

Student

By Hades, ’twas most awful.

Festus

And when love

Merges in creature-worship, let us mind:

We know not what it is we love: perhaps

It is incarnate evil. In the time

It takes to turn a leaf, we are in Heaven;

Making our way among the wheeling worlds,

Millions of suns, half infinite each, and space

For ever shone into, for ever dark,

As God is, to and by created mind,

Upheld by the companion spirit. There

The nature of the all in one, and whence

Evil; the fixed impossibility

Of creatures’ perfectness, until made one

With God; and the necessity of ill

As yet, are things all touched upon and proven.

The next scene shows us hell, in the mad mock

Of mortal revelry⁠—the quelling truth

That all life’s sinful follies run to hell;

That lies, debauches, murders never die,

But live in hell forever; make, are hell.

And truth is there too. Hell is its own moral.

Perdition certain to the unrepentant;

Redemption on a like scale with creation;

And all creation needing it and having.

What follows is of earth, and setteth forth

God’s mercy, and the mystery of sin;

And a great gathering of the worlds round God,

Told by the youth to his truthful, trustful, love;

Who, light and lowly as a little glow-worm,

Sheddeth her beauty round her like a rose

Sweet smelling dew upon the ground it grows on.

And then a rest in light, as though ’tween earth

And Heaven there were a mediate spirit point,

A bright effect original of God,

Enlightening all ways, inwardly and round.

Then comes a scene of passion, brought about

By the bad spirit’s means for his own ends,

Whom we know not when come, so dark we grow;

Making it but a blind for the next scene,

Laid by the lonely seashore, as before,

Where the great waves come in frothed, like a horse

Put to his heart-burst speed, sobbing up hill,

Wherein he works his victim’s death, to clear

His way, and keep his name of murderer;

As he in other parts makes good his titles,

Deceiver, liar, tempter, and accuser;

Hater of man, and, most of all, of God.

In the next scene we picture back our life,

Contrasting the pure joys of earlier years,

With the unsatedness of current sin;

And the sad feel that love’s own heart turns sick

Like a bad pearl; but that the feeling still

Is adamantine, though the splendid thing

Whereon it writes its record, is of all

Frailest; and though earth shows to good and bad,

The same blind kindness, beautiful to see,

Wherewith our lovely mother loveth us,

The world in vain unbosometh her beauty,

We have no lust to live; for things may be

Corrupted into beauty; and that love,

Where all the passions blend, as hues in white,

Tires at the last, as day would, if all day

And no night. So despair of heart increases.

The last lure⁠—power⁠—is proffered, taken. All

Hangs on the last desire, whatever it be.

A scene of prescient solitude and soul

Commune with heaven, repentance, prayer, faith,

Which are all things inspired alone of God,

Who signifies salvation, follows this.

In the next scene, we feel the end draw nigh.

A change is wrought on earth as great as that

In its first ages, when the elements

Less gross and palpable than air, were changed

To mountainous and adamantine mass,

Now ’neath the feet of nations;⁠—figuring forth

The fateful mind which is to govern all,

Controlling the great evil; for it is mind

Which shall rule and be ruled, and not the body,

In the last age of human sway on earth;⁠—

Ambition ruined by its own success;

Aims lost, power useless: love, pure love, the last

Of mortal things that nestles in the heart.

There is a love which acts to death, and through death,

And may come white, and bright and pure, like paper,

From refuse, or from clearest things at first;

It is beyond the accidents of life.

For things we make no compt of, have in them

The seeds of life, use, beauty, like the cores

Of apples that we fling away;⁠—nought now

Is left but trust in God, who tries the heart

And saves it, at the last, from its own ruin⁠—

The parting spirit fluttering like a flag,

Half from its earthy staff. The death-change comes.

Death is another life. We bow our heads

At going out, we think, and enter straight

Another golden chamber of the king’s,

Larger than this we leave, and lovelier.

And then in shadowy glimpses, disconnect,

The story, flower like, closes thus its leaves.

The will of God is all in all. He makes,

Destroys, remakes, for His own pleasure, all.

After inferior nature is subdued,

The evil is confined. All elements

Conglobe themselves from chaos, purified.

The rebegotten world is born again.

The body and the soul cease; spirit lives:

And gloriously falsified are all

Earth’s caverned prophecies of bodyhood.

Spirits rise up and rule and link with Heaven;⁠—

The soul state is searched into; dormant Death,

Evil, and all the dark gods of the heart,

And the idolatrous passions, ruined, chained,

And worshipless, are seen; and there, the Word,

Heard and obeyed;⁠—next comes the truth divine,

Redintergrative; Evil’s last and worst,

Endeavour, vanquished⁠—by Almighty good.

The last scene shows the final doom of earth,

Soul’s judgment, and salvation of the youth,

As was fore-fixed on from and in the first:

The universe expurgated of evil,

And hell for aye abolished; all create,

Redeemed, their God all love, themselves all bliss.

We may say that the sun is dead and gone

For ever; and may swear he will rise no more;

The skies may put on mourning for their God,

And earth heap ashes on her head: but who

Shall keep the sun back, when he thinks to rise?

Where is the chain shall bind him? Where the cell

Shall hold him? Hell, he would burn down to embers;

And would lift up the world with a lever of light

Out of his way: yet, know ye, ’twere thrice less

To do thrice this, than keep the soul from God.

O’er earth, and cloud, and sky, and star, and Heaven,

It dwells with God uprisen as a prayer.

The spirit speaks of God in Heaven’s own tongue,

No mystery to those who love, but learned,

As is our mother tongue, om Him, the parent;

By whom created, fashioned, flesh and spirit,

All forms and feelings of all kinds of beauty

Are burned into our heart-clay, pattern like.

Much too is writ, elsewhere and here, not yet,

Made clear, nor can be till earth come of age;

Like the unfinished rudiments of light

Which gather time by time into a star.

Thus have I shown the meaning of the book,

And the most truthful likeness of a mind,

Which hath as yet been limned; the mind of youth

In strengths and failings, in its overcomings,

And in its short comings; the kingly ends,

The universalizing heart of youth;

Its love of power, heed not how had, although

With surety of self-ruin at the end.

Every thing urged against it proves its truth

And faithfulness to nature. Some cried out

’Twas inconsistent; so ’twas meant to be.

Such is the very stamp of youth and nature;

And the continual losing sight of its aims,

And the desertion of its most expressed

And dearest rules and objects, this is youth.

Student

I look on life as keeping me from God,

Stars, Heaven, and angels’ bosoms. I lay ill;

And the dark hot blood, throbbing through and through me;

They bled me and I swooned; and as I died,

Or seemed to die, a soft, sweet sadness fell

With a voluptuous weakness, on my soul,

That made me feel all happy. But my heart

Would live, and rose, and wrestled with the soul,

Which stretched its wings and strained its strength in vain,

Twining around it as a snake an eagle.

My eyes unclosed again, and I looked up,

And saw the sweet blue twilight, and one star,

One only star, in Heaven; and then I wished

That I had died and gone to it; and straight

Was glad I lived again, lo love once more.

And so our souls turn round upon themselves

Like orbs upon their axles: what was night

Is day; what day, night. God will guide us on,

Body and soul, through life and death, to judgment.

Festus

Earth hath her deserts mixed with fruitful plains;

The word of God is barren in some parts;

A rose is not all flower, but hath much

Which is of lower beauty, yet like needful;

And he who in great makings doth like these,

Doth only that which is most natural.

Like life too it is boundlessly unequal,

Now soaring, and now grovelling: at one time

All harmony, and then again all harshness,

With an ever-changing style of thought and speech.

The work is still consistent with itself:

As one part often bears upon another,

Lifting it to the light, where most it needs.

The thoughts we have of men are bold as men;

Our thoughts of God are thin and fleet as ghosts;

But it was not his meaning to draw men,

Such as he heard they were in the old world

And sometimes mixed with; he blessed God he knew

But little of the world, that little good;

While some sighed out that little was its all.

So for the persons and the scenes he drew,

Oft in a dim and dreamy imagery

Shapen, half-shapen, mis-shapen, unshapen,

They are the shadowy creatures which youth dreams

Live in the world embodied, but are not,

Save in the mind’s, which is the mightier one.

They are the names of things which we believe in,

Ideas not embodied, alas, not!

And the sad fate which many of those meet

Whom the youth loves and quits, means nought so ill

As the betrayer’s sin, salvationless

Almost: it is but desertion, not betrayal;

And forced on him according to a promise,

Made at the first unto him, and to be

Wrought out in brief time; and the same fair souls

Saved, stand for our desires made pure in Heaven.

Let us work out our natures; we can do

No wrong in them, they are divine, eterne:

I follow my attraction, and obey

Nature, as earth does, circling round her source

Of life and light, and keeping true in Heaven,

Though not perfect in round, which nothing is.

’Twas the heart-book of love, well nigh all grief.

For the heart leaves its likeness best in that

Overwhelming sorrow which burns up and buries,

Like to the eloquent impression left

In lava, of Pompeian maiden’s bosom.

All passions, and all pleasures, and all powers

Of man’s heart, are brought in, and mind and frame.

He made this work the business of his life;

It was his mission; and was laid on him.

He was a labourer on the ways of God,

And had his hire in peace and power to work.

He wrote it not in the contempt of rule,

And not in hate; but in the self made rule

That there was none to him, but to himself

He was his sole rule, and had right to be.

The faults are faults of nature, and prove art

Man’s nature, that a thing of art, like it,

Should be so pure in kind.

Helen

I do believe

The world is a forged thing, and hath not got

The die of God upon it. It will not pass

In Heaven, I tell ye.

Student

How shouldst thou know aught

Of Heaven, unless by contrast?

Festus

Pray now cease;

Ye two are jarring ever, though as with

The bickering beauty of two swords, whose strife,

Though deadly, maketh music, I could listen,

Did not each stab, whichever way, pain me.

Helen

Oh, I could stand and rend myself with rage

To think I am so weak, that all are so;

Mere minims in the music made from us⁠—

While I would be a hand to sweep from end

To end, from infinite to infinite,

The world’s great chord. The beautiful of old

Had but to say some god had been with them,

And their worst fault was hallowed to their best deed.

That was to live. Could we uproot the past,

Which grows and throws its chilling shade o’er us,

Lengthening every hour and darkening it;

Or could we plant the future where we would,

And make it flourish, that, too, were to live.

But it is not more true that what is, is,

Than that what is not, is not. It is enough

To bear the ever present, as we do.

The city of the past is laid in ruins;

Its echo-echoing walls at a whisper fall:

The coming is not yet built; nor as yet

Its deep foundations laid; but seems, at once,

Like the air city, goodly and well watered,

Which the dry wind doth dream of on the sands

Where he dies away with his wanderings:

While we enjoy the hope thereof, and perish;

Not seeing that the desert present is

Our end.

Festus

The brightest natures oft have darkest

End, as fire smoke.

Student

I will read the book in the hope

Of learning somewhat from it.

Festus

Thou may’st learn

A hearty thanksgiving for blessings here,

And proud prediction of a state to come,

Of love, and life, and power unlimited;

And uttered in a sound and homely tongue,

Fit to be used by all who think while speaking.

With here and there some old, hard uncouth words

Which have withal a quaint and meaning richness,

As stones make more the power of the soil.

The world hath said its say for and against;

And after praise and blame cometh the truth.

Living men look on all who live askance.

Were he a cold grey ghost, he would have honour;

And though as man he must have mixed with men,

Yet the true bard doth make himself ghost-like;

He lives apart from men; he wakes and walks

By nights; he puts himself into the world

Above him; and he is what but few see.

He knows, too, to the old hid treasure, truth;

And the world wonders, shortly, how some one

Hath come so rich of soul; it little dreams

Of the poor ghost that made him. Yet he comes

To none save of his own blood, and lets pass

Many a generation till his like

Turns up; moreover, this same genius

Comes, ghost-like, to those only who are lonely

In life and in desire; never to crowds:

And it can make its way through every thing,

And is never happy till it tells its secret;

But pale and pressed down with the inward weight

Of unborn works, it sickens nigh to death,

Often; but who like happy at a birth?

Student

Say what a poet ought to do and be.

Festus

Though it may scarce become me, knowing little,

Yet what I have thought out upon that theme,

And deem true, I will tell thee.

Helen

Now I know

You two will talk of nothing else all night;

So I will to my music. Sweet! I come.

Art thou not glad to see me? What a time

Since I have touched thine eloquent white fingers.

Hast thou forgot me? Mind, now? Know’st thou not

My greeting? Ah! I love thee. Talk away!

Never mind me; I shall not you.

Student

Agreed!

Helen

By the sweet muse of music, I could swear

I do believe it smiles upon me; see it

Full of unuttered music, like a bird;

Rich in invisible treasures, like a bud

Of unborn sweets, and thick about the heart

With ripe and rosy beauty⁠—full to trembling.

I love it like a sister. Hark!⁠—its tones;

They melt the soul within one like a sword,

Albeit sheathed, by lightning. Talk to me,

Lovely one! Answer me, thou beauty!

Student

Hear her!

Festus

Experience and imagination are

Mother and sire of song⁠—the harp and hand.

The bard’s aim is to give us thoughts: his art

Lieth in giving them as bright as may be.

And even when their looks are earthy, still

If opened, like geoids, they may be found

Full of all sparkling sparry loveliness.

They should be wrought, not cast; like tempered steel,

Burned and cooled, burned again, and cooled again.

A thought is like a ray of light⁠—complex

In nature, simple only in effect.

Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more.

Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show

Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been.

Let every thought, too, soldier-like, be stripped,

And roughly looked over. The dress of words,

Like to the Roman girl’s enticing garb,

Should let the play of limb be seen through it,

And the round rising form. A mist of words,

Like halos round the moon, though they enlarge

The seeming size of thoughts, make the light less

Doubly. It is the thought writ down we want,

Not its effect⁠—not likenesses of likenesses.

And such descriptions are not, more than gloves

Instead of hands to shake, enough for us.

Student

But is the power⁠—is poesie inborn,

Or is it to be gained by art or toil?

Festus

It is underived, except from God; but where

Strongest, asks most of human care and aid.

Great bards toil much and most; but most at first,

Ere they can learn to concentrate the soul

For hours upon a thought to carry it.

Student

Why I have sat for hours and never moved,

Saving my hands, clock-like, in writing round

Day after day of thought, and lapse of life.

Festus

Many make books, few poems, which may do

Well for their gains, but they do nought for truth,

Nor man, true bard’s main aim. Perish the books,

But the creations live. Some steal a thought,

And clip it round the edge, and challenge him

Whose ’twas to swear to it. To serve things thus

Is as foul witches to cut up old moons

Into new stars. Some never rise above

A pretty fault, like faulty dahlias;

And of whose best things it is kindly said,

The thought is fair; but, to be perfect, wants

A little heightening, like a pretty face

With a low forehead. Do thou more than such,

Or else do nothing. And in poetry,

There is a poet-worship, one of other

Which is idolatry, and not the true

Love-service of the soul to God, which hath

Alone of His inbreathing, and is rendered

Unto Him, from the first, without man’s mean,

By those whom He makes worthy of His worship;

Who kneel at once to Him, and at no shrine,

Save in the world’s wide ear, do they confess them

Of faults which are all truths; and through which ear,

As the world says them over to itself,

He heareth and absolveth; for the bard

Speaks but what all feel more or less within

The heart’s heart, and the sin confessed is done

Away with and for ever.

Student

What of style?

Festus

There is no style is good but nature’s style.

And the great ancients’ writings, beside ours,

Look like illuminated manuscripts

Before plain press print; all had different minds,

And followed only their own bents: for this

Nor copied that, nor that the other; each

Is finished in his writing, each is best

For his own mind, and that it was upon;

And all have lived, are living, and shall live;

But these have died, are dying, and shall die;

Yea, copyists shall die, spark out and out.

Minds which combine and make alone can tell

The bearings and the workings of all things

Li and upon each other. All the parts

Of nature meet and fit: wit, wisdom, worth,

Goodness and greatness; to sublimity

Beauty arises, like a planet world,

Labouring slowly, seemingly, up Heaven;

But with an infinite pace to some immortal eyes.

And he who means to be a great bard, most

Measure himself against pure mind, and fling

His soul into a stream of thought, as will

A swimmer hurl himself into the water.

But never swimmer on the stream, nor bird

On wind, feels half so strong, or swift, or glad,

As bard borne high on his mind above himself;

As though he should begin a lay like this,

Where spiritual element is all;

Thought chafing thought, as bough bough, till all burn,

Like the star-written prophecies of Heaven.

The shattered shadow of eternity

Upon the troubled world, even as the sun

Shows brokenly on wavy waters, time;

All time is but a second to the dead.

The smoke of the great burning of the world

Had trailed across the skies for many an age,

And was fast wearing into air away,

When a saint stood before the throne, and cried⁠—

Blessed be Thou, Lord God of all the worlds

That have been, and that are, and are to be!

For Thy destruction is like infinite

With Thy creation, just and wise in both:

Give me a world; and God said, Be it so:

And the world was: and then go on to show

How this new orb was made, and where it shone;

Who ruled, abode, worshipped and loved therein;

Their natures, duties, hopes: let it be pure,

Wise, holy, beautiful; if not to be

Without it, made so by constraint of God⁠—

Kindly forced good: we have had enough of sin

And folly here to wish for and love change.

Let him show God as going thither mildly,

Father-like, blessing all and cursing none;

And that there never will be need for them

That He shall come in glory new to Himself,

With light to which the lightning shall be shadow,

And the sun sadness; borne upon a car

With wheels of burning worlds, within whose rims

Whole hells burn, and beneath whose course the stars

Dry up like dew-drops. But of this enough;

I mean that he must weigh himself as he

Will be weighed after by posterity;

After us all are critics, to a man.

Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear

Glean after what it can. The voice of great

Or graceful thoughts is sweeter far than all

Word-music; and great thoughts, like great deeds, need

No trumpet. Never be in haste in writing.

Let that thou utterest be of nature’s flow,

Not art’s; a fountain’s, not a pump’s. But once

Begun, work thou all things into thy work;

And set thyself about it, as the sea

About earth, lashing at it day and night.

And leave the stamp of thine own soul in it

As thorough as the fossil flower in clay.

The theme shall start and struggle in thy breast,

Like to a spirit in its tomb at rising,

Bending the stones, and crying, Resurrection!

Student

What theme remains?

Festus

Thyself, thy race, thy love,

The faithless and the full of faith in God;

Thy race’s destiny, thy sacred love.

Every believer is God’s miracle.

Nothing will stand whose staple is not love;

The love of God, or man, or lovely woman;

The first is scarely touched, the next scarce felt,

The third is desecrated; lift it up;

Redeem it, hallow it, blend the three in one

Great holy work. It shall be read in Heaven

By all the saved of sinners of all time;

Preachers shall point to it, and tell their wards

It is a handful off eternal truth;

Make ye a heartful of it: men shall will

That it be buried with them in their hands:

The young, the gay, the innocent, the brave,

The fair, with soul and body both all love,

Shall run to it with joy; and the old man,

Still hearty in decline, whose happy life

Hath blossomed downwards, like the purple bell-flower,

Closing the book, shall utter lowlily⁠—

Death, thou art infinite, it is life is little.

Believe thou art inspired, and thou art.

Look at the bard and others; never heed

The petty hints of envy. If a fault

It be in bard to deem himself inspired,

’Tis one which hath had many followers

Before him. He is wont to make, unite,

Believe; the world to part, and doubt, and narrow.

That he believes, he utters. What the world

Utters, it trusts not. But the time may come

When all, along with those who seek to raise

Men’s minds, and have enough of pain, without

Suffering from envy, may be God-inspired

To utter truth, and feel like love for men.

Poets are henceforth the world’s teachers. Still

The world is all in sects, which makes one loathe it.

Student

The men of mind are mountains, and their heads

Are sunned long ere the rest of earth. I would

Be one such.

Festus

It is well. Burn to be great.

Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone.

The plains are everlasting as the hills.

The bard cannot have two pursuits: aught else

Comes on the mind with the like shock as though

Two worlds had gone to war and met in air.

And now that thou hast heard thus much from one

Not wont to seek, nor give, nor take advice,

Remember, whatsoe’er thou art as man,

Suffer the world, entreat it and forgive.

They who forgive most shall be most forgiven.

Dear Helen, I will tell the what I love

Next to thee⁠—poesie.

Helen

Can any thing

Be even second to me in thy love?

Doth it not distance all things?

Festus

To say sooth,

I once loved many things ere I met with thee,

My one blue break of beauty in the clouds;

Bending thyself to me as Heaven to earth.

Helen

My love is like the moon, seems now to grow,

And now to lessen; but it is only so

Because thou canst not see it all at once

It knows nor day, nor morrow, like the sun;

Unchangeable as space it shall still be

When yon bright suns, which are themselves but sands

In the great glass of Time, shall be run out.

Festus

Man is but half man without woman; and

As do idolaters their heavenless gods,

We deify the things which we adore.

Helen

Our life is comely as a whole; nay, more,

Like rich brown ringlets, with odd hairs all gold.

We women have four seasons, like the year,

Our spring is in our lightsome girlish days,

When the heart laughs within us for sheer joy;

Ere yet we know what love is or the ill

Of being loved by those whom we love not.

Summer is when we love and are beloved,

And seems short; from its very splendour seems

To pass the quickest; crowned with flowers it flies.

Autumn, when some young thing with tiny hands,

And rosy cheeks, and flossy tendrilled locks,

Is wantoning about us day and night.

And winter is when these we love have perished;

For the heart ices then. And the next spring

Is in another world, if one there be.

Some miss one season, some another; this

Shall have them early, and that late; and yet

The year wear round with all as best it may.

There is no rule for it; but in the main

It is as I have said.

Festus

My life with thee

Is like a song, and the sweet music thou,

Which doth accompany it.

Student

Say, did thy friend

Write aught beside the work thou tell’st of?

Festus

Nothing.

After that, like the burning peak, he fell

Into himself, and was missing ever after.

Student

If not a secret, pray who was he?

Festus

I.