PIPPA PASSES.
31
Sings, minding not that palpitating arch
Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o’erhead, nor crowns cast off,
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on—
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.
But you must say a “well” to that—say “well!”
Because you gaze—am I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life’s-stuff, marble—marbly
Even to the silence! Why, before I found
The real flesh Phene, I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
For better nature’s birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form
Of beauty—to the human archetype.
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that—the tree, the flower—or take the fruit,—
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o’er its bough; as rosy limbs,
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities!
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air’s embrace,
Half-softened by a halo’s pearly gloom;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble!—’neath my tools
More pliable than jelly—as it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the earth’s heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked;
Of hands and arms, nor the quick drip of wine
From the drenched leaves o’erhead, nor crowns cast off,
Violet and parsley crowns to trample on—
Sings, pausing as the patron-ghosts approve,
Devoutly their unconquerable hymn.
But you must say a “well” to that—say “well!”
Because you gaze—am I fantastic, sweet?
Gaze like my very life’s-stuff, marble—marbly
Even to the silence! Why, before I found
The real flesh Phene, I inured myself
To see, throughout all nature, varied stuff
For better nature’s birth by means of art:
With me, each substance tended to one form
Of beauty—to the human archetype.
On every side occurred suggestive germs
Of that—the tree, the flower—or take the fruit,—
Some rosy shape, continuing the peach,
Curved beewise o’er its bough; as rosy limbs,
Depending, nestled in the leaves; and just
From a cleft rose-peach the whole Dryad sprang.
But of the stuffs one can be master of,
How I divined their capabilities!
From the soft-rinded smoothening facile chalk
That yields your outline to the air’s embrace,
Half-softened by a halo’s pearly gloom;
Down to the crisp imperious steel, so sure
To cut its one confided thought clean out
Of all the world. But marble!—’neath my tools
More pliable than jelly—as it were
Some clear primordial creature dug from depths
In the earth’s heart, where itself breeds itself,
And whence all baser substance may be worked;
