Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/311

Himself will see it sifted, disenthralled,
And kept upon the height and in the light,
As far as, and no farther, than ’tis truth;
For,—now He has left off calling firmaments
And strata, flowers and creatures, very good,—
He says it still of truth, which is His own.
Truth, so far, in my book;—the truth which draws
Through all things upwards; that a twofold world
Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things
And spiritual,—who separates those two
In art, in morals, or the social drift,
Tears up the bond of nature and brings death,
Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse,
Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men,
Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divide
This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,—
The perfect round which fitted Venus’ hand
Has perished utterly as if we ate
Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe,
The natural’s impossible;—no form,
No motion! Without sensuous, spiritual
Is inappreciable;—no beauty or power!
And in this twofold sphere the twofold man
(And still the artist is intensely a man)
Holds firmly by the natural, to reach
The spiritual beyond it,—fixes still
The type with mortal vision, to pierce through,
With eyes immortal, to the antetype
Some call the ideal,—better called the real,