Men and Women | Page 5

new world, and read his last chapter of St. John to better purpose
than towards
self-glorification beyond his fellows, is a parable of the
more profitable life to be found in following the famous injunction of
that chapter in John's Gospel, "Feed my sheep!" than in causing those
sheep to motion one, as the bishop would have his obsequious wethers
of the flock motion him, to the choice places of the sward.
So, as vivid a picture of the materialism and monopolizing of the
present century sowing seeds of decay and self-destruction in the
movement of this age toward love of the truth, of the beauty of
genuineness in character and earnestness in aim, is portrayed through
the realistic personality of the great modern bishop, in his easy-smiling
after-dinner talk with Gigadibs, the literary man, as is presented of the
Central Renaissance period in the companion picture of the Bishop of
Saint Praxed's.
In Cleon, the man of composite art and culture, the last ripe fruitage of
Greek development, is personified and brought into contact, at the
moment of the dawn of Christianity in Europe, with the ardent impulse
the Christian ideal of spiritual life supplied to human civilization. How
close the wise and broad Greek culture came to being all-sufficing,
capable of effecting almost enough of impetus for the aspiring progress
of the world, and yet how much it lacked a warmer element essential to
be engrafted upon its lofty beauty, the reader, upon whose imaginative
vision the personality of Cleon rises, can scarcely help but feel.
The aesthetic and religious or philosophical interests vitally conceived
and blended, which link together so many of the main poems of "Men
and Women," close with "Cleon." Rudel, the troubadour, presenting, in
the self-abandonment of his offering of love to the Lady of Tripoli, an
impersonation of the chivalric love
characteristic of the Provencal life
of the twelfth century, intervenes, appropriately, last of all, between the
preceding poems and the epilogue, which devotes heart and brain of the
poet himself, with the creatures of his hand, to his "Moon of Poets."
As these poetic creations now stand, they all seem, upon
examination,

to incarnate the full-bodied life of distinctive types of men, centred
amid their relations with other men within a specific social
environment, and fulfilling the possibilities for such unique, dramatic
syntheses as were revealed but partially or in embryo here and there
among the other shorter poems of this period of the poet's growth.
In one important particular the re-arrangement of the "Men and
Women" group of poems made its title inappropriate. The graceful
presence and love-lit eyes of the many women of the shorter
love-poems were withdrawn, and Artemis, Andrea del Sarto's wife, the
Prior's niece--"Saint Lucy, I would say," as Fra Lippo
explains--and,
perhaps, the inspirer of Rudel's chivalry, too, the shadowy yet learned
and queenly Lady of Tripoli, alone were left to represent the "women"
of the title. As for minor inexactitudes, what does it matter that the
advantage gained by nicely selecting the poems properly belonging
together, both in conception and artistic modelling, was won at the cost
of making the reference inaccurate, in the opening lines of "One Word
More," to "my fifty men and women, naming me the fifty poems
finished"?--Or that the mention of Roland in line 138 is no longer in
place with Karshish, Cleon, Lippo, and Andrea, now that the fantastic
story of Childe Roland's desperate loyalty is given closer
companionship among the varied experiences narrated in the "Dramatic
Romances"? While as for the mention of the Norbert of "In a
Balcony"--which was originally included as but one item along with the
other contents of "Men and Women"--that miniature drama, although it
stands by itself now, is still near enough at hand in the revised order to
account for the allusion. These are all trifles--mere sins against literal
accuracy. But the discrepancy in the title occasioned by the absence of
women is of more importance. It is of especial interest, in calling
attention to the fact that the creator of Pompilia, Balaustion, and the
heroine of the "Inn Album"--all central figures, whence radiate the life
and spiritual energy of the work they ennoble--had, at this period,
created no typical figures of women in any degree corresponding to
those of his men.
CHARLOTTE PORTER
HELEN A. CLARKE

"TRANSCENDENTALISM: A POEM IN TWELVE BOOKS"
1855
Stop playing, poet! May a brother speak?
'Tis you speak, that's your
error. Song's our art:
Whereas you please to speak these naked
thoughts
Instead of draping them in sights and sounds.
--True
thoughts, good thoughts, thoughts fit to treasure up! But why such long
prolusion and display,
Such turning and adjustment of the harp,

And taking it upon your breast, at length,
Only to speak dry words
across its strings?
Stark-naked thought is in request enough: 10 Speak
prose and hollo it