The Testament of Beauty/Introduction

by Robert Bridges

THE TESTAMENT OF BEAUTY

 BOOK I Introduction

MORTAL Prudence, handmaid of divine Providence,hath inscrutable reckoning with Fate and Fortune:We sail a changeful sea through halcyon days and storm,and when the ship laboureth, our stedfast purposetrembles like as the compass in a binnacle.Our stability is but balance, and wisdom liesin masterful administration of the unforeseen.

'Twas late in my long journey, when I had clomb to wherethe path was narrowing and the company few,10a glow of childlike wonder enthral'd me, as if my sense had come to a new birth purified, my mind enraptre-awakening to a fresh initiation of life;with like surprise of joy as any man may knowwho rambling wide hath turn'd, resting on some hill-topto view the plain he has left, and see'th it now out-spreddmapp'd at his feet, a landscape so by beauty estrangedhe scarce wil ken familiar haunts, nor his own home,maybe, where far it lieth, small as a faded thought. Or as I well remember one highday in June20bright on the seaward South-downs, where I had come afaron a wild garden planted years agone, and fencedthickly within live-beechen walls: the season it wasof prodigal gay blossom, and man's skill had madea fair-order'd husbandry of that nativ pleasaunce:But had ther been no more than earth's wild loveliness,the blue sky and soft air and the unmown flowersprent lawns,I would hav lain me down and long'd, as then I did,to lie there ever indolently undisturb'd, and watchthe common flowers that starr'd the fine grass of the wold,30waving in gay display their gold-heads to the sun,each telling of its own inconscient happiness,each type a faultless essence of God's will, such gemsas magic master-minds in painting or musicthrew aside once for man's regard or disregard; things supreme in themselves, eternal, unnumber'din the unexplored necessities of Life and Love.

 To such a mood I had come, by what charm I know not,where on thatt upland path I was pacing alone;and yet was nothing new to me, only all was vivid40and significant that had been dormant or dead:as if in a museum the fossils on their shelvesshould come to life suddenly, or a winter rose-bedburst into crowded holiday of scent and bloom.I felt the domination of Nature's secret urge,and happy escape therein; as when in boyhood oncefrom the rattling workshops of a great factoryconducted into the engine-room I stood in faceof the quiet driving power, that fast in nether caveseated, set all the floors a-quiver, a thousand looms50throbbing and jennies dancing; and I felt at hearta kinship with it and sympathy, as children wilwith amicable monsters: for in truth the mindis indissociable from what it contemplates,as thirst and generous wine are to a man that drinkethnor kenneth whether his pleasur is more in his desireor in the savor of the rich grape that allays it.

 Man's Reason is in such deep insolvency to sense, that tho' she guide his highest flight heav'nward, and teach himdignity morals manners and human comfort,60she can delicatly and dangerously bedizenthe rioting joys that fringe the sad pathways of Hell.Nor without alliance of the animal senseshath she any miracle: Lov'st thou in the blithe hourof April dawns—nay marvelest thou not—to hearthe ravishing music that the small birdës makein garden or woodland, rapturously heraldingthe break of day; when the first lark on high hath warn'dthe vigilant robin already of the sun's approach,and he on slender pipe calleth the nesting tribes70to awake and fill and thrill their myriad-warbling throatspraising life's God, untill the blisful revel growin wild profusion unfeign'd to such a hymn as manhath never in temple or grove pour'd to the Lord of heav'n? Hast thou then thought that all this ravishing music,that stirreth so thy heart, making thee dream of thingsillimitable unsearchable and of heavenly import,is but a light disturbance of the atoms of air,whose jostling ripples, gather'd within the ear, are tunedto resonant scale, and thence by the enthron'd mind received80on the spiral stairway of her audience chamberas heralds of high spiritual significance? and that without thine ear, sound would hav no report,Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for theeany better melody in the April woods at dawnthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awakeo' night in his comfortless attic, might perchancebe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch? Now since the thoughtless birds not only act and enjoythis music, but to their offspring teach it with care,90handing on those small folk-songs from father to sonin such faithful tradition that they are familiarunchanging to the changeful generations of men—and year by year, listening to himself the nightingaleas amorous of his art as of his brooding matepractiseth every phrase of his espousal lay,and still provoketh envy of the lesser songsterswith the same notes that woke poetic eloquencealike in Sophocles and the sick heart of Keats—see then how deeply seated is the urgence whereto100Bach and Mozart obey'd, or those other minstrelswho pioneer'd for us on the marches of heav'nand paid no heed to wars that swept the world around,nor in their homes were more troubled by cannon-roarthan late the small birds wer, that nested and carol'dupon the devastated battlefields of France.  Birds are of all animals the nearest to menfor that they take delight in both music and dance,and gracefully schooling leisure to enliven lifewer the earlier artists: moreover in their airy flight110(which in its swiftness symboleth man's soaring thought)they hav no rival but man, and easily surpassin their free voyaging his most desperate daring,altho' he hath fed and sped his ocean-ships with fire;and now, disturbing me as I write, I hear on highhis roaring airplanes, and idly raising my headsee them there; like a migratory flock of birdsthat rustle southward from the cold fall of the yearin order'd phalanx—so the thin-rankt squadrons ply,till sound and sight failing me they are lost in the clouds.

120Man's happiness, his flaunting honey'd flower of soul,is his loving response to the wealth of Nature.Beauty is the prime motiv of all his excellence,his aim and peaceful purpose; whereby he himselfbecoming a creator hath often a thought to askwhy Nature, being so inexhaustible of beauty,should not be all-beauteous; why, from infinit resource,produce more ugliness than human artistrywith any spiritual intention can allow?  Wisdom wil repudiate thee, if thou think to enquire130why things are as they are or whence they came: thy taskis first to learn what is, and in pursuant knowledgepure intellect wil find pure pleasur and the only groundfor a philosophy conformable to truth.And wouldst thou play Creator and Ordinator of things,be Nature then thy Chaos and be thou her God!Whereafter if in spirit dishearten'd and distress'dto find evil with good, ugly with beautifulproffer'd by Nature indifferently without shame,thou wilt proceed to judge, but in conning thy brief140suspect the prejudice of human self-regarddistinguishing moralities where never is none—thou art come round wrongfully again to question Nature,who by her own faculty in thee judgeth herself:to impugn thy verdict is to unseat thatt judge. And science vindicateth the appeal to Reasonwhich is no less Nature's prescriptiv oraclefor being in all her plan so small and tickle a thing: How small a thing! if things immeasurable allowa greater and less (and thought wil reckon some thoughts great,150prolific, everlasting; other some againsmall and contemptible) say then, How small a partof Universal Mind can conscient Reason claim! 'Tis to the unconscious mind as the habitable crustis to the mass of the earth; this crust whereon we dwellwhereon our loves and shames are begotten and buried,our first slime and ancestral dust: 'Tis, to compare,thinner than o'er a luscious peach the velvet skinthat we rip off to engorge the rich succulent pulp:Wer but our planet's sphere so peel'd, flay'd of the rind160that wraps its lava and rock, the solar satellitewould keep its motions in God's orrery undisturb'd. Yea: and how delicat! Life's mighty mysterysprang from eternal seeds in the elemental fire,self-animat in forms that fire annihilates:all its selfpropagating organisms existonly within a few degrees of the long scalerangeing from measured zero to unimagin'd heat,a little oasis of Life in Nature's desert;and ev'n therein are our soft bodies vext and harm'd170by their own small distemperature, nor could they endurewer't not that by a secret miracle of chemistrythey hold internal poise upon a razor-edgethat may not ev'n be blunted, lest we sicken and die.

 This Intellect, whereby above the other species Mankind assumeth genus in a rank apart,is nascent also in brutes, and of their bloodkinshipas fair a warranty as our common passions are,our common bones and muscles, skin and nerves of sense.But because human sorrow springeth of man's thought,180some men hav fal'n unhappily to envy the bruteswho for mere lack of reason, love life and enjoyexistence without care: and in some sort doubtlesshappier are they than many a miserable man,whether in disease or misfortune outclass'd from lifeor thru' the disillusion of Lust wreck'd in remorse:Corruption of best is ever the worst corruption.

 'Tis true ther is no balance to weigh these goods and illsnor any measur of them, like as of colour and heatin their degrees; they are incommensurable in kind.190'Tis with mere pleasur and pain as if they, being so light,coud not this way or thatt deflect Life's monarch-beam;for howso deliberatly a man may wish for deathstill wil he instinctivly fight to the last for life.Vet with the burden of thought pains are of great moment,and sickening thought itself engendereth corporal pain:But likewise also of pleasure—here too Reason again, whether in prospect or memory, is the greater part;our hope is ever livelier than despair, our joylivelier and more abiding than our sorrows are,200which leak away untill no taint remain; their seedsshriveling too thin to lodge in Memory's hustled sieve.Wherefore I assert:—if Reason's only function werto heighten our pleasure, that wer vindication enough;For what wer pleasur if never contemplation gavea spiritual significance to objects of sense,nor in thought's atmosphere poetic vision arose? Brutes hav their keener senses far outrangeing oursnor without here and there some adumbration of soul:But the sensuous intuition in them is steril,210'tis the bare cloth whereon our rich banquet is spredd;and so the sorrowful sufferer who envied their state,wer he but granted his blind wish to liv as they—whether 'twer lark or lion, or some high-antler'd stagin startled pose of his fantastic majestygazing adown the glade—he would draw blank, nor tastethe human satisfaction of his release from care:as well be a sloven toad in his dark hole: Unlikethose damn'd souls by the Harpies tantalized in Hellwhose tortur it was to see their ostentatious feast220snatch'd from their reach—but he sitting with the dainties out-spredd before him would see them, nor ever feelany desire nor memory of their old relish.

 This quarrel and dissatisfaction of man with Naturespringeth of a vision which beareth assuranceof the diviner principle implicit in Life:And mystic Vision may so wholly absorb a manthat he wil loathe ev'n pleasure, mortifying the fleshby disciplin of discomfort so to strengthen his faith.Thus tho' 'twas otherwise than on Plato's ladder230that Francis climb'd—rather his gentle soul had learn'dfrom taste of vanity and by malease of the flesh—he abjured as worthless ev'n what good men will call good,and standing forth, as chivalrous knight and championof holiness, in his devotion of heart to God,all earthly sun-joys seem'd so transitory and vainthat soon the unseen took shape to common eyes; the folkcumber'd him with servility, and his memoryis beatified in the admiration of all mankind. Now his following in life and his fame thereafter240confute the lower school of Ethick, which would teachthat spiritual ideas are but dream-stuff in men:For Francis admitted no compromise nor glosswhereby the Church had thought to ease the easy yoke which he reshoulder'd as his Master had offer'd it,and espousing Poverty as the outcast widow of Christwould walk in Umbria as He walk'd in Galileefounding the kingdom of God among those angry Jewswho made earthly rebellion against Caesar's empire:and in imitation and compassion of Jesus250would touch nothing but what had been bless'd at his lips:For the morrow hav no more care than a lily hath—for his head less shelter than a beast of the field—no purse nor scrip for his journey and but one garment—and scorning intellect and pursuit of knowledgeliv'd as a bare spirit in its low prison of flesh,until thru' tribulation he should win to peace,quam mundus nobis dare non potest pacem,in those eternal mansions where Dante found himamong the Just. Yet ev'n Francis coud praise Nature,260tho' from such altitude whatever pictur is drawnmust be out of focus of our terrestrial senses. 'Twas thus he made, when he lay sick in Damian,his hymn in honour of God and praise of his creatures;All-first and specially of the Sun whom he callethhis honourable brother and symbol of Very God;and then the Moon his sister, and all the stars of heav'nthe clouds and winds his kindred; and of the Earth he saith— Praisèd be thou, my Lord, for my sister, Mother Earth,who doth sustain and govern us and bringeth forth270all manner of fruit and herb and flowers of myriad hue.In direst pain of body and despond of soul he ask'dbut for this Bencitè to be sung by his bed,fleeing for sanctuary to the bond of Nature—"the inconceivable high works unfathomable whose aspect giveth the Angels strength, and men revere the gentle changes of the day."—

The sky's unresting cloudland, that with varying playsifteth the sunlight thru' its figured shades, that nowstand in massiv range, cumulated stupendous280mountainous snowbillowy up-piled in dazzling sheen,Now like sailing ships on a calm ocean drifting,Now scatter'd wispy waifs, that neath the eager blazedisperse in air; Or now parcelling the icy inanehighspredd in fine diaper of silver and mother-of-pearlfreaking the intense azure;Now scurrying close o'erhead,wild ink-hued random racers that fling sheeted raingustily, and with garish bows laughing o'erarch the land:Or, if the spirit of storm be abroad, huge molten glooms289mount on the horizon stealthily, and gathering as they climbdeep-freighted with live lightning, thunder and drenching floodrebuff the winds, and with black-purpling terror impend til they be driven away, when grave Night peacefullyclearing her heavenly rondure of its turbid veilslayeth bare the playthings of Creation's babyhood;and the immortal fireballs of her uttermost spacetwinkle like friendly rushlights on the countryside. Them soon the jealous Day o'errideth to displayEarth's green robe, which the sun fostereth for shelter and showerThe dance of young trees that in a wild birch-spinney300toss to and fro the cluster of their flickering crests,as rye curtseying in array to the breeze of May;The ancestral trunks that mightily in the forest choirsrear stedfast colonnade, or imperceptiblysway in tall pinewoods to their whispering spires;The woodland's alternating hues, the vaporous bloomof the first blushings and tender flushings of spring;The slumbrous foliage of high midsummer's wealth;Rich Autumn's golden quittance, to the bankruptcyof the black shapely skeletons standing in snow:310Or, in gay months of swelling pomp, the luxuryof leisur'd gardens teeming with affection'd thought;the heartfelt secrecy of rustic nooks, and valleysvocal with angelic rilling of rocky streams,by rambling country-lanes, with hazel and thorn embower'dwoodbine, bryony and wild roses; the landscape lure of rural England, that held glory in native artuntill our painters took their new fashion from France.

 This spiritual elation and response to Natureis Man's generic mark. A wolf that all his life320had hunted after nightfall neath the starlit skiesshould he suddenly attain the first inklings of thoughtwould feel this Wonder: and by some kindred stir of mindthe ruminants can plead approach—the look of itis born already of fear and gentleness in the eyesof the wild antelope, and hence by fable assign'dto the unseen unicorn reposed in burning lair—a symbol of majestic sadness and lonely pride:but the true intellectual wonder is first reveal'din children and savages and 'tis there the footing330of all our temples and of all science and art. Thus Rafaël once venturing to show God in Mangave a child's eyes of wonder to his baby Christ;and his Mantuan brother coud he hav seen that picturewould more truly hav foreshadow'd the incarnation of God.'Tis divinest childhood's incomparable bloom,the loss whereof leaveth the man's face shabby and dull.

SEEKING unceasingly for the First Cause of All,in question for what special Purpose he was made,Man, in the unsearchable darkness, knoweth one thing340that as he is, so was he made: and if the Essenceand characteristic faculty of humanityis our conscient Reason and our desire of knowledge,thatt was Nature's Purpose in the making of man.

But can there be any Will or Purpose in Nature?thatt Universe external to our percipient sense,which when we examin itself we think only to finda structur of blind atoms to their habits enslaved,or else, examining our senses, suspect to bea dream of empty appearance and vain imagery.—350 As a man thru' a window into a darken'd housepeering vainly wil see, always and easily,the glass surface and his own face mirror'd thereon,tho' looking from another angle, or hooding his eyeshe may discern some real objects within the room—some say 'tis so with us, and also affirm that theyby study of their reflection hav discover'd in truthther is nothing but thatt same reflection inside the house. See how they hav made o' the window an impermeable wallpartitioning man off from the rest of nature 360with stronger impertinence than Science can allow.Man's mind, Nature's entrusted gem, her own mirrorcannot bë isolated from her other worksby self-abstraction of its unique fecundity in the new realm of his transcendent life;—Not emotion or imagination ethic or artlogic of science nor dialectic discourse,not even thatt supersensuous sublimation of thought,the euristic vision of mathematical trance,hath any other foundation than the common base370of Nature's building:—not even his independenceof will, his range of knowledge, and spiritual aim,can separate him off from the impercipient:Altho' his mind be such that it might seem as iftrue Individuality within the specieswere peculiar to man: So foolish is he, and wise,—despondent and hopeful, patient and complaining,courageous and cowardly, diffident and vain,cringing and commanding, industrious and idle,cruel and tenderhearted, truthful and perfidious,380imaginativ or dull—one man how loveableanother how hateful, alike man, brutal or divine. Whereamong hath the sceptic honourable place,thatt old iconoclast who coud destroy the gods soon as men made them, vain imagery and unworthy,low symbols of the Eternal that standeth unchanged.Like some medicinal root in pharmacy, whose juiceis wholesom for purgation,—so is he—and if Truthbe thatt which Omniscience would assert of all things,we may grant him his motto "Truth is not for man".390But from his sleepy castle he wil be tempted forthif ever a hunting hom echo in the woods around,for he loveth the chase, and, like a good sportsman,his hounds and his weapons as he loveth the prey.

 So musing all my days with unceasing wonderand encountering many phases of many minds,thru' kindly environment of my dispositionI grew, as all things grow, in the pattern of Self;til stumbling early upon the mystic words, whereby—in the Semitic matrix of my father's creed—400Jahveh reveal'd his secret Being to the Jews,and conning those large letters I AM THAT I AMI wonder'd finding only my own thought of myself,and reading there that man was made in God's imageknew not yet that God was made in the image of man;nor the profounder truth that both these truths are one,no quibbling scoff—for surely as mind in man groweth so with his manhood groweth his idea of God,wider ever and worthier, untill it may contain409and reconcile in reason all wisdom passion and love,and bring at last (may God so grant) Christ's Peace on Earth. Nor coud it ever dwell in my possible thoughtthat whatsoever grew and groweth can be unlikein cause and substance to the thing it groweth on:Thus I saw Conscience as a natural flower-budon its vigorous plant specialized to a functionmarvelously, a blossom first unique in designof beauty, in colour and form, thickening therefrom to a fruitproductiv to infinit regeneration; and yetthis bud—as any primer of botany can teach—420is but a differentiation of the infertile leaf,which held all this miracle in intrinsic potence. Thus science would teach, and Heraclitus, I say,was not the least among the sages of Hellas,Nor those fire-worshippers foolish who, seeing the Sunto be the efficient cause of all life upon earth,welcomed his full effulgence for their symbol of God.And since we observe in all existence four stages—Atomic, Organic, Sensuous, and Selfconscient—and must conceive these in gradation, it was no flaw430in Leibnitz to endow his monad-atoms with Mind tho' in our schools of thought "unconscious mind" is call'da contradiction in terms; as if the embranglementsof logic wer the prime condition of all Being,the essence of things; and man in the toilsom journeyfrom conscience of nothing to conscient ignorancemistook his tottery crutch for the main organ of life.

 'Tis laughable that man should fondle such surpriseat animal behaviour, seeing some beetle or fly—whose very existence is so negligible and brief—440act more intelligently than he might himselfhad he been there to advise with all his pros and cons,his cause, effect and means: Such conduct he wil style"Marvels of Instinct", but what sort of wisdom is thisthat mistaketh the exception for the general ruleand the rule for the exception? Since the animal worldimmeasurably outnumbereth the species of man,and wholly is ruled by Instinct: 'Tis the Reason of manthat is the exception and marvel; nay, 'tis plain to seehow, as our Life is animal so also our conduct450is mainly instinctiv, while pure Reason left to herselfrelieth on axioms and essential premiseswhich she can neither question nor resolve, things farbeyond her, holding her anchor in eternal Mind, characteristic universals, the firm rockwhereon her lofty watch-towers are planted, and all her star-gazing observatories built.

 Wise thinkers do homage to good fellow-thinkers,nor disregard the general commonsense of man—that untouch'd photograph of external Nature460self-pictur'd for us nakedly on her own mirror:—and tho' common opinion may be assent in errorther is little or none accord in philosophic thought:this picklock Reason is still a-fumbling at the wards,bragging to unlock the door of stern Reality.Ask what is reasonable! See how time and climeconform mind more than body in their environment;what then and there was Reason, is here and now absurd;what I now chance to approve, may be or become to othersstrange and unpalatable as now appear to me470the weighty sentences of the angelic Doctor:For I rank it among the unimaginableshow Saint Thomas, with all his honesty and keen thought,toiling to found an irrefragable systemof metaphysic, ethic and theologic truth,should with open eyes have accepted for main premissthe myth of a divine fiasco, on which to assure the wisdom of God; leading to a foregon conclusionof illachrymable logic, a monstrous schemehorrendum informe ingens cui Lumen ademptum.480 Some would say that the Saint himself held not the faithwhich universal credit compell'd him to assumeif he would lead and teach the Church: But so to think(as tho' 'twas but the best gambit to open his game)wer to his acumen and his honesty alike unjust.I am happier in surmising that his vision at Mass—in Naples it was when he fell suddenly in trance—was some disenthralment of his humanity;for thereafter, whether 'twer Aristotle or Christthat had appear'd to him then, he nevermore wrote word490neither dictated but laid by inkhorn and pen;and was as a man out of hearing on thatt daywhen Reynaldus, with all the importunity of zealand intimacy of friendship, would hav recall'd himto his incompleted summa; and sighing he reply'd I wil tell thee a secret, my son, constraining theelest thou dare impart it to any man while I liv.My writing is at end. I hav seen such things reveal'dthat what I hav wriiten and taught seemeth to me of small worth.And hence I hope in my God, that, as of doctrin500 ther wil be speedily also an end of Life!

THER is no tradition among the lemmings of Norwayhow their progenitors, when their offspring increased,bravely forsook their crowded nestes in the snow,swarming upon the plains to ravage field and farm,and in unswerving course ate their way to the coast,where plunging down the rocks they swam in the salt seato drowning death; nor hav they in acting thus todayany plan for their journey or prospect in the event. But clerks and chroniclers wer many in Christendom,510when France and Germany pour'd out the rabblementof the second Crusade, and its record is writ;its leaders' titles, kings and knights of fair renown,their resolve and'design: and yet for all their vows,their consecrating crosses and embroider'd flags,the eloquent preaching of Saint Bernard, and the wilesof thatt young amorous amazon, Queen Eleanor,they wer impell'd as madly, journey'd as blindlyand perish'd as miserably as the thoughtless voles,by disease starvation and massacre, ot enslavedby wrath of the folk whose homes they had wreckt and ravaged;521til of the unnumber'd rout a poor remnant fled back,the shame of humanity for their folly and crimes.  Reason, shamefast at heart and vain above measure,would look to find the firstfruits of intelligenceshowing some provident correction of man's estateto'ard social order, a wise discriminat purposein clear contrast against the blind habits of brutes:And when our honest hope turneth away repell'dby the terror and superstition of savagery—wherein nascent Reason seemeth to hav hoodwink'd Mind,—531if we read but of Europe since the birth of Christ,'tis still incompetent disorder, all a lectureof irredeemable shame; the wrongs and sufferingsalike of kings and clowns are a pitiful tale. Follow the path of those fair warriors, the tall Goths,from the day when they led their blue-eyed familiesoff Vistula's cold pasture-lands, their murky homeby the amber-strewen foreshore of the Baltic sea,and in the incontaminat vigor of manliness540feeling their rumour'd way to an unknown promised land,tore at the ravel'd fringes of the purple power,and trampling its wide skirts, defeating its armies,slaying its Emperor, and burning his cities,sack'd Athens and Rome; untill supplanting Caesar they ruled the world where Romans reign'd before:— Yet from those three long centuries of rapin and blood,inhumanity of heart and wanton cruelty of hand,ther is little left, save the broken relic of onegood bishop, and the record of one noble king,—who both had suck'd their virtue from the wither'd dugs551of learning, where she lay sickening within the wallsof rich Byzance:—Those Goths wer strong but to destroy;they neither wrote nor wrought, thought not nor created;but since the field was rank with tares and mildew'd wheat,their scything won some praise: Else have they left no trace,save for their share in that rich mingled characterof Hebrew, Roman, Vandal, Mussulman and Kelt,that spoke the pride of Spain, to stand for ever alivein one grandesque effigy of ennobled folly,560among fair Beauty's fairest offspring unreproved. Yet for this intellectual laughter—deem it nottrue Wisdom's panoply. The wise will live by Faith,faith in the order of Nature and that her order is good.'Twer scepticism in them to cherish make-believe,creeds and precise focusings of the unsearchable:at such things they may smile; yet for man's ignoranceand frailty the only saving consolation is faith,the which theologians tell us is the gift of God,as other good things are, and laughter is one of them; 570and sharing of man's Essence 'twil be at height in himwhen 'tis the laughter of Reason—enjoyable; and 'tis fitthat he should show Nature this courtesy, and kindlymake light of all the troubles that compel no tears:—Cervantes in misfortune when a galley-slavewept not—but where sorrow is sacred humour is dumb,and in full calamity it is madness: whereforeHamlet himself would never hav been aught to us, or weto Hamlet, wer't not for the artful balance wherebyShakespeare so gingerly put his sanity in doubt580 without the while confounding his Reason.

 And tho' desire of perfection is Nature's promisewe should not in the field of Reason look to findless vary and veer than elsewhere in the flux of Life:We may rather rejoice in the great abundance,the indigenous fruitage of our gay Paradise,that Persia, China and Babylon put forth their bloom,that India and Egypt wer seedplots of wisdom.The best part of our lives we are wanderers in Romance:Our fathers travel'd Eastward to revel in wonders590where pyramid pagoda and picturesque attireglow in the fading sunset of antiquity;and now wil the Orientals make hither in return outlandish pilgrimage: their wiseacres hav seenthe electric light i' the West, and come to worship;tasting romance in our unsightly noveltiesand scientific tricks; for all things in their daymay hav opinion of glory: Glory is opinion,the vain doxology wherewith man would praise God.

 Time eateth away at many an old delusion,600yet with civilization delusions make head;the thicket of the people wil take furtiv firefrom irresponsible catchwords of live ideas,sudden as a gorse-bush from the smouldering endof any loiterer's match-splint, which, unless trodden outafore it spredd, or quell'd with wieldy threshing-rodswil burn ten years of planting with all last year's ricksand blacken a countryside. 'Tis like enough that menignorant of fire and poison should be precondemn'dto sudden deaths and burnings, but 'tis mightily610to the reproach of Reason that she cannot savenor guide the herd; that minds who else wer fit to rulemust win to power by flattery and pretence, and soby spiritual dishonesty in their flurried reignconfirm the disrepute of all authority—but only in sackcloth can the Muse speak of such things.

WISDOM hat hewed her house: She that dwelleth alwaywith God in the Evermore, afore any world was,fashion'd the nascent Earth that the energy of its lifemight come to evolution in the becoming of Man,620who, as her subject, should subjéct all to her ruleand bring God's latest work to be a realm of delight.So she herself, the essential Beauty of Holiness,pass'd her creativ joy into the creature's heart,to take back from his hand her Adoration robesand royal crown of his Imagination and Love. And when she had made of men lovers and worshippers,these vied to enshrine her godhead in enduring fanesand architectur of stone, that high her pensiv towersmight hallow their throng'd cities and, transfeaturing630Nature's wild landscape to the sovranty of Mind,comfort his mortality with immortal grace. Yet not to those colossal temples where old Nileguideth a ribbon oasis thru' the Libyan sands,depositing a kingdom from his fabled fount—like thatt twin-sister stream of slothful thought, whose floodfertilized the rude mind of Egypt—not to these,nor those Cyclopean tombs, which hieroglyphic kings uprear'd to hide their mummies from the common death,whereto their folk dragging the slow burdensome stones640wer driven and fed like beasts, untill the pyramidin geometrical enormity peak'd true—'Tis not to these—nay nor in Gizeh to thatt Sphinx,grand solitary symbol of man's double nature,with lion body couchant and with human headgazing out vainly upon the desert—not to theselook we with grateful pleasur or satisfaction of soul,wonderfine tho' they be, and indestructibleagainst sandblast of time and spoliation of man—nor tho' with sixty centuries of knowledge pass'd650still those primeval sculptors shame our paltry style:—Nay ev'n so, not to these look we to find comfort;Not yet was Wisdom justified of her children.

 Long had the homing bees plunder'd the thymy flanksof famed Hymettus harvesting their sweet honey:agelong the dancing waves had lapp'd the Ægean islesand promontories of the blue Ionian shore—where in her Mediterranean mirror gazingold Asia's dreamy face wrinkleth to a westward smile—and the wild olive, cleft-rooted in Attica,660wreath'd but the rocks, afore the wandering Aryan tribes, whose Goddess was Athena, met, and in her rightknew themselves lords of Hellas and the Achean landwhereto they had come fighting, for their children to winheritage of Earth's empire. 'Twas their youthful tonguethat Wisdom sought when her Egyptian kingdom fail'd,and choosing to be call'd Athena daughter of Zeusmotion'd the marble to her living grace, and tookher dwelling in the high-templed Acropolis of the fair city that still hath her name.

670 As some perfected flower, Iris or Lily, is bornpatterning heavenly beauty, a pictur'd ideathat hath no other expression for us, nor coud hav:for thatt which Lily or Iris tell cannot be toldby poetry or by music in their secret tongues,nor is discerptible in logic, but is itselfan absolute piece of Being, and we know not,nay, nor search not by what creativ miraclethe soul's language is writ in perishable forms—yet are we aware of such existences crowding,680mysterious beauties unexpanded, unreveal'd,phantasies intangible investing us closely,hid only from our eyes by skies that will not clear;activ presences, striving to force an entrance, like bodiless exiled souls in dumb urgence pleadingto be brought to birth in our conscient existence,as if our troubled lot wer the life they long'd for;even as poor mortals thirst for immortality:—And every divination of Natur or reach of Artis nearer attainment to the divine plenitude690of understanding, and in moments of Vision their unseen company is the breath of Life:—

 By such happy influence of their chosen goddessthe mind of Hellas blossom'd with a wondrous flow'r,flaming in summer season, and in its autumn fallripening an everlasting fruit, that in dyingscatter'd its pregnant seeds into all the winds of heav'n:nor ever again hath like bloom appear'd among men.

 Knowledge accumulateth slowly and not in vain;with new attainment new orders of beauty arise,700in thought and art new values; but man's facultieswere gifted once for all and stand, 'twould seem, at stay:Ther is now no higher intellect to brighten the worldthan little Hellas own'd; nay scarcely here and thereliveth a man among us to rival their seers. So might we fear that such implicit unity,so friendly a passionat love for nature beauty and truth, such dignity of body tender of pride and shame,such lively accord of Sense, Instinct, Reason and Spiritas gazeth down on us with alien sovranty710from all their statuesque literature and art,wer a grace (so might we fear) like the grace of childhoodlost in growth, a glory of the past, not to return. Such 'twer vain to deplore; since true beauty of manhoodoutfeatureth childish charm, and whether in men or thingsBest is mature; tho' Beauty is neither growth nor strength;for ugliness also groweth proudly and is strong.Well might we ask what Beauty ever coud liv or thrivein our crowded democracy under governanceof such politic fancy as a farmer would show720who cultivated weeds in hope of good harvest:and yet hath modern cultur enrich'd a wasting soil;Science comforting man's animal povertyand leisuring his toil, hath humanized mannersand social temper, and now above her globe-spredd netof speeded intercourse hath outrun all magic,and disclosing the secrecy of the reticent airhath woven a seamless web of invisible strandsspiriting the dumb inane with the quick matter of life:Now music's prison'd raptur and the drown'd voice of truth730mantled in light's velocity, over land and sea are omnipresent, speaking aloud to every ear,into every heart and home their unhinder'd message,the body and soul of Universal Brotherhood;whereby war faln from savagery to fratricide,from a trumpeting vainglory to a crying shame,stalketh now with blasting curse branded on its brow. And if the Greek Muses wer a graceful companyyet hav we two, that in maturity transcendthe promise of their baby-prattle in Time's cradle,740Musick and Mathematick: coud their wet-nursesbut see these foster-children upgrown in full stature,Pythagoras would marvel and Athena rejoice. And ev'n to Apollo's choir was a rich voice lackingin the great symphonies of the poetic throngwho beneath Homer's crown enroll'd immortal names;for without later names the full compass of songhad been unknown to man—nay and some English names,whose younger voices in the imagination of loveswell'd to spiritual ecstasy, and emotion'd life750with mystic inspiration of new lyric rapture:and 'twas the first alluring gleam of thatt visionthat stole by virtue of novelty the world awayfrom the philosophic concinnity of Greek art,to abjure the severe ordering of its antique folds.  In love of fleshly prowess Hellas overesteem'dthe nobility of passion and of animal strength,and the acclamation of their Olympic games outfacedspiritual combat;—as their forefathers wer they,those old seapirates, who with roving robbery760built up their island lordships on the ruin of Crete,when the unforbearing rivalry of their free citieswreck'd their confederacy within the sevenscore years'twixt Marathon and Issus; untill from the prideof routing Xerxes and his fabulous host, they fellto make that most memorable of all invasionsless memorable in the glory of Alexander,under whose alien kingship they conspired to outreachtheir own ambition, winning dominions too widefor domination; and wer, with their virtue, dispersed770and molten into the great stiffening alloy of Rome.

 So it was when Jesus came in his gentlenesswith his divine compassion and great Gospel of Peace,men hail'd him Word of God, and in the title of Christcrown'd him with love beyond all earth-names of renown. For He, wandering unarm'd save by the Spirit's flame,in few years with few friends founded a world-empirewider than Alexander's and more enduring; since from his death it took its everlasting life.HIS kingdom is God's kingdom, and his holy temple780not in Athens or Rome but in the heart of man.They who understand not cannot forget, and theywho keep not his commandment call him Master and Lord.He preach'd once to the herd, but now calleth the wise,and shall in his second Advent, that tarried long,be glorified by the Greeks that come to the feast:But the great Light shineth in great darkness, the seedthat fell by the wayside hath been trodden under foot,that which fell on the Rock is nigh wither'd away;While loud and louder thro' the dazed head of the Sphinx790 the old lion's voice roareth o'er all the lands.