Men and Women | Page 5

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 till Europe hears!?The six-foot Swiss tube, braced about with bark,?Which helps the hunter's voice from Alp to Alp--?Exchange our harp for that--who hinders you?
But here's your fault; grown men want thought, you think;?Thought's what they