Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/245

And (while we scorn him for a flower or two,
As being, Heaven help us, less poetical)
Contains, himself, both flowers and firmaments
And surging seas and aspectable stars,
And all that we would push him out of sight
In order to see nearer. Let us pray
God’s grace to keep God’s image in repute;
That so, the poet and philanthropist
(Even I and Romney) may stand side by side,
Because we both stand face to face with men
Contemplating the people in the rough,—
Yet each so follow a vocation,—his
And mine.
I walked on, musing with myself
On life and art, and whether, after all,
A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics, a completer poetry
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants,
More fully than the special outside plans,
Phalansteries, material institutes
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries
Preferred by modern thinkers, as they thought
The bread of man indeed made all his life,
And washing seven times in the ‘People’s Baths’
Were sovereign for a people’s leprosy,—
Still leaving out the essential prophet’s word
That comes in power. On which, we thunder down,
We prophets, poets,—Virtue’s in the word!
The maker burnt the darkness up with His,
To inaugurate the use of vocal life;