FullReads

VIII

What of Rafael’s sonnets, Dante’s picture?
This: no artist lives and loves, that longs not
Once, and only once, and for one only, 60
(Ah, the prize!) to find his love a language
Fit and fair and simple and sufficient–
Using nature that’s an art to others,
Not, this one time, art that’s turned his nature.
Ay, of all the artists living, loving,
None but would forego his proper dowry,–
Does he paint? he fain would write a poem,
Does he write? he fain would paint a picture,–
Put to proof art alien to the artist’s,
Once, and only once, and for one only, 70
So to be the man and leave the artist,
Gain the man’s joy, miss the artist’s sorrow.

IX

Wherefore? Heaven’s gift takes earth’s abatement!
He who smites the rock and spreads the water, 74
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him,
Even he, the minute makes immortal,
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute,
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing.
While he smites, how can he but remember,
So he smote before, in such a peril, 80
When they stood and mocked–“Shall smiting help us?”
When they drank and sneered–“A stroke is easy!”
When they wiped their mouths and went their journey,
Throwing him for thanks–“But drought was pleasant.”
Thus old memories mar the actual triumph;
Thus the doing savors of disrelish;
Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat;
O’er-importuned brows becloud the mandate,
Carelessness or consciousness–the gesture.
For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90
Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces,
Hears, yet one time more, the ‘customed prelude–
“How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us?”
Guesses what is like to prove the sequel–
“Egypt’s flesh-pots –nay, the drought was better.” 95

X

Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant!
Theirs, the Sinai-forhead’s cloven brilliance, 97
Right-arm’s rod-sweep, tongue’s imperial fiat.
Never dares the man put off the prophet.

XI

Did he love one face from out the thousands, 100
(Were she Jethro’s daughter, white and wifely, 101
Were she but the AEthiopian bondslave),
He would envy yon dumb, patient camel,
Keeping a reserve of scanty water
Meant to save his own life in the desert;
Ready in the desert to deliver
(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened)
Hoard and life together for his mistress.

XII

I shall never, in the years remaining,
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues. 110
Make you music that should all-express me;
So it seems; I stand on my attainment.
This of verse alone, one life allows me;
Verse and nothing else have I to give you;
Other heights in other lives, God willing;
All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love.

XIII

Yet a semblance of resource avails us–
Shade so finely touched, love’s sense must seize it.
Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly,
Lines I write the first time and the last time. 120
He who works in fresco steals a hair-brush,
Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly,
Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little,
Makes a strange art of an art familiar,
Fills his lady’s missal-marge with flowerets,
He who blows through bronze may breathe through silver,
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess.
He who writes, may write for once as I do.