Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian
hill rejoice-
Moons wane, and races wither to
the tomb,
And mid the universal ruin,
bloom
The rosy days of Gods-With
man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The senses pleasure
and the souls content;
While on celestial brows, aloft
and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seekest thou on earth the life of
gods to share,
Safe in the realm of death?-beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter
to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their
glow-
Short are the joys possession can
bestow,
And in possession sweet desire
will die.
Twas not the ninefold chain
of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the
Stygian river-
She plucked the fruit of the unholy
ground,
And so-was hells
forever!
The weavers of the web-the
fates-but sway
The matter and the things of clay;
Safe from change that time
to matter gives,
Natures blest playmate, free
at will to stray
With gods a god, amidst the fields
of day,
The form, the archetype ,
serenely lives.
Wouldst thou soar heavenward
on its joyous wing?
Cast from thee, earth, the
bitter and the real,
High from this cramped and dungeon
being, spring
Into the realm of the ideal!
Here, bathed, perfection, in thy
purest ray,
Free from the clogs and taints of
clay,
Hovers divine the archetypal
man!
Dim as those phantom ghosts of life
that gleam
And wander voiceless by the Stygian
stream,-
Fair as it stands in fields
Elysian,
Ere down to flesh the immortal doth
descend:-
If doubtful ever in the actual
life
Each contest-here a victory
crowns the end
Of every nobler strife.
Not from the strife itself to set
thee free,
But more to nerve-doth
victory
Wave her rich garland from
the ideal clime.
Whateer thy wish, the earth
has no repose-
Life still must drag thee onward
as it flows,
Whirling thee down the dancing
surge of time.
But when the courage sinks beneath
the dull
Sense of its narrow limits-on
the soul,
Bright from the hill-tops of the
beautiful,
Bursts the attained goal!
If worth thy while the glory and
the strife
Which fire the lists of actual life-
The ardent rush to fortune
or to fame,
In the hot field where strength
and valor are,
And rolls the whirling thunder of
the car,
And the world, breathless,
eyes the glorious game-
Then dare and strive-the
prize can but belong
To him whose valor oer
his tribe prevails;
In life the victory only crowns
the strong-
He who is feeble fails.
But life, whose source, by crags
around it piled,
Chafed while confined, foams fierce
and wild,
Glides soft and smooth when
once its streams expand,
When its waves, glassing in their
silver play,
Aurora blent with Hespers
milder ray,
Gain the still beautiful-that
shadow-land!
Here, contest grows but interchange
of love,
All curb is but the bondage
of the grace;
Gone is each foe,-peace
folds her wings above
Her native dwelling-place.
When, through dead stone to breathe
a soul of light,
With the dull matter to unite
The kindling genius, some
great sculptor glows;
Behold him straining, every nerve
intent-
Behold how, oer the subject
element,
The stately thought its march
laborious goes!
For never, save to toil untiring,
spoke
The unwilling truth from her
mysterious well-
The statue only to the chisels
stroke
Wakes from its marble cell.
But onward to the sphere of beauty-go
Onward, O child of art! and, lo!
Out of the matter which thy
pains control
The statue springs!-not
as with labor wrung
From the hard block, but as from
nothing sprung-
Airy and light-the
offspring of the soul!
The pangs, the cares, the weary
toils it cost
Leave not a trace when once
the work is done-
The Artists human frailty
merged and lost
In arts great victory
won!
If human sin confronts the rigid
law
Of perfect truth and virtue ,
awe
Seizes and saddens thee to
see how far
Beyond thy reach, perfection;-if
we test
By the ideal of the good, the best,
How mean our efforts and our
actions are!
This space between the ideal of
mans soul
And mans achievement,
who hath ever past?
An ocean spreads between us and
that goal,
Where anchor neer was
cast!
But fly the boundary of the senses-live
The ideal life free thought can
give;
And, lo, the gulf shall vanish,
and the chill
Of the souls impotent despair
be gone!
And with divinity thou sharest the
throne,
Let but divinity become thy
will!
Scorn not the law-permit
its iron band
The sense (it cannot chain
the soul) to thrall.
Let man no more the will of Jove
withstand ,
And Jove the bolt lets fall!
If, in the woes of actual human
life-
If thou couldst see the serpent
strife
Which the Greek art has made
divine in stone-
Couldst see the writhing
limbs, the livid cheek,
Note every pang, and hearken every
shriek,
Of some despairing lost Laocoon,
The human nature would thyself subdue
To share the human woe before
thine eye-
Thy cheek would pale, and all thy
soul be true
To mans great sympathy.
But in the ideal realm, aloof and
far,
Where the calm arts pure
dwellers are,
Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but
does not groan.
Here, no sharp grief the high emotion
knows-
Here, sufferings self is
made divine, and shows
The brave resolve of the firm
soul alone:
Here, lovely as the rainbow on the
dew
Of the spent thunder-cloud,
to art is given,
Gleaming through griefs dark
veil, the peaceful blue
Of the sweet moral heaven.
So, in the glorious parable, behold
How, bowed to mortal bonds, of old
Lifes dreary path divine
Alcides trod:
The hydra and the lion were his
prey,
And to restore the friend he loved
to-day,
He went undaunted to the black-browed
god;
And all the torments and the labors
sore
Wroth Juno sent-the
meek majestic one,
With patient spirit and unquailing,
bore,
Until the course was run-
Until the god cast down his garb
of clay,
And rent in hallowing flame away
The mortal part from the divine-to
soar
To the empyreal air! Behold
him spring
Blithe in the pride of the unwonted
wing,
And the dull matter that confined
before
Sinks downward, downward, downward
as a dream!
Olympian hymns receive the
escaping soul,
And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial
stream,
Fills for a god the bowl!
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