Christmas Eve | Page 6

abusing me?That I should wait here lonely and coldly,?Instead of rising, entering boldly,?Baring truth's face, and letting drift?Her veils of lies as they choose to shift??Do these men praise him? I will raise?My voice up to their point of praise!?I see the error; but above?The scope of error, see the love.--?Oh, love of those first Christian days!?--Fanned so soon into a blaze,?From the spark preserved by the trampled sect,?That the antique sovereign Intellect?Which then sat ruling in the world,?Like a change in dreams, was hurled?From the throne he reigned upon:?You looked up and he was gone.?Gone, his glory of the pen!?--Love, with Greece and Rome in ken,?Bade her scribes abhor the trick?Of poetry and rhetoric,?And exult with hearts set free,?In blessed imbecility?Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet?Leaving Sallust incomplete?Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter!?--Love, while able to acquaint her?While the thousand statues yet?Fresh from chisel, pictures wet?From brush, she saw on every side,?Chose rather with an infant's pride?To frame those portents which impart?Such unction to true Christian Art.?Gone, music too! The air was stirred?By happy wings: Terpander's* bird?*[Footnote: Terpander, a famous Lesbian musician and lyric poet, 670 B.C.] (That, when the cold came, fled away)?Would tarry not the wintry day,--?As more-enduring sculpture must,?Till filthy saints rebuked the gust?With which they chanced to get a sight?Of some dear naked Aphrodite?They glanced a thought above the toes of,?By breaking zealously her nose off.?Love, surely, from that music's lingering,?Might have filched her organ-fingering,?Nor chosen rather to set prayings?To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings.?Love was the startling thing, the new:?Love was the all-sufficient too;?And seeing that, you see the rest:?As a babe can find its mother's breast?As well in darkness as in light,?Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right.?True, the world's eyes are open now:?--Less need for me to disallow?Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled,?Peevish as ever to be suckled,?Lulled by the same old baby-prattle?With intermixture of the rattle,?When she would have them creep, stand steady?Upon their feet, or walk already,?Not to speak of trying to climb.?I will be wise another time,?And not desire a wall between us,?When next I see a church-roof cover?So many species of one genus,?All with foreheads bearing lover?Written above the earnest eyes of them;?All with breasts that beat for beauty,?Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them,?In noble daring, steadfast duty,?The heroic in passion, or in action,--?Or, lowered for sense's satisfaction,?To the mere outside of human creatures,?Mere perfect form and faultless features.?What? with all Rome here, whence to levy?Such contributions to their appetite,?With women and men in a gorgeous bevy,?They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight?On their southern eyes, restrained from?feeding?On the glories of their ancient reading,?On the beauties of their modern singing,?On the wonders of the builder's bringing,?On the majesties of Art around them,--?And, all these loves, late struggling incessant,?When faith has at last united and bound them,?They offer up to God for a present??Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it,--?And, only taking the act in reference?To the other recipients who might have allowed it,?I will rejoice that God had the preference.
XII
So I summed up my new resolves:?Too much love there can never be.?And where the intellect devolves?Its function on love exclusively,?I, a man who possesses both,?Will accept the provision, nothing loth,?--Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere,?That my intellect may find its share.?And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest,?And see them applaud the great heart of the artist,?Who, examining the capabilities?Of the block of marble he has to fashion?Into a type of thought or passion,--?Not always, using obvious facilities,?Shapes it, as any artist can,?Into a perfect symmetrical man,?Complete from head to foot of the life-size,?Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes,--?But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate?A Colossus by no means so easy to come at,?And uses the whole of his block for the bust,?Leaving the mind of the public to finish it,?Since cut it ruefully short he must:?On the face alone he expends his devotion,?He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it,?--Saying, "Applaud me for this grand notion?"Of what a face may be! As for completing it?"In breast and body and limbs, do that, you!"?All hail! I fancy how, happily meeting it,?A trunk and legs would perfect the statue,?Could man carve so as to answer volition.?And how much nobler than petty cavils,?Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels,Some artist of another ambition, Who, having a block to carve, no bigger,?Has spent his power on the opposite quest,?And believed to begin at the feet was best--?For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure!
XIII
No sooner said than out in the night!?My heart lighter and more light:?And still, as before, I was walking swift,?With my senses settling fast and steadying,?But my body caught up in the whirl and drift?Of the vesture's amplitude, still