| Hic. On the grey sand beside the shallow stream |
| Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still |
| A lamp
burns on beside the open book |
| That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon |
| And though you have
passed the best of life still trace, |
| Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion, |
| Magical shapes. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. By the
help of an image |
| I call to my own opposite, summon all |
| That I have handled least, least looked upon. |
|
|
|
|
| Hic. And I would find myself and not an image. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. That is our modern hope and by its light |
| We have
lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind |
| And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; |
| Whether we have chosen
chisel, pen or brush, |
| We are but critics, or but half create, |
| Timid, entangled, empty and abashed, |
| Lacking
the countenance of our friends. |
|
|
|
|
| Hic. And yet |
| The chief imagination of Christendom, |
| Dante Alighieri,
so utterly found himself |
| That he has made that hollow face of his |
| More plain to the mind’s eye than
any face |
| But that of Christ. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. And did he find himself |
| Or was the hunger that had made it hollow |
| A
hunger for the apple on the bough |
| Most out of reach? and is that spectral image |
| The man that Lapo
and that Guido knew? |
| I think he fashioned from his opposite |
| An image that might have been a stony
face |
| Staring upon a Bedouin’s horse-hair roof |
| From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned |
| Among
the coarse grass and the camel-dung. |
| He set his chisel to the hardest stone. |
| Being mocked by Guido
for his lecherous life, |
| Derided and deriding, driven out |
| To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread, |
| He
found the unpersuadable justice, he found |
| The most exalted lady loved by a man. |
|
|
|
|
| Hic. Yet surely there
are men who have made their art |
| Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, |
| Impulsive men that look for happiness |
| And
sing when they have found it. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. No, not sing, |
| For those that love the world serve it in action, |
| Grow
rich, popular and full of influence, |
| And should they paint or write, still it is action: |
| The struggle of
the fly in marmalade. |
| The rhetorician would deceive his neighbours, |
| The sentimentalist himself; while
art |
| Is but a vision of reality. |
| What portion in the world can the artist have |
| Who has awakened from the
common dream |
| But dissipation and despair? |
|
|
|
|
| Hic. And yet |
| No one denies to Keats love of the world; |
| Remember
his deliberate happiness. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. His art is happy, but who knows his mind? |
| I see a schoolboy
when I think of him, |
| With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window, |
| For certainly he sank into his
grave |
| His senses and his heart unsatisfied, |
| And made—being poor, ailing and ignorant, |
| Shut out from
all the luxury of the world, |
| The coarse-bred son of a livery-stable keeper— |
| Luxuriant song. |
|
|
|
|
| Hic. Why
should you leave the lamp |
| Burning alone beside an open book, |
| And trace these characters upon the
sands? |
| A style is found by sedentary toil |
| And by the imitation of great masters. |
|
|
|
|
| Ille. Because I seek an
image, not a book. |
| Those men that in their writings are most wise |
| Own nothing but their blind, stupefied
hearts. |
| I call to the mysterious one who yet |
| Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream |
| And
look most like me, being indeed my double, |
| And prove of all imaginable things |
| The most unlike, being
my anti-self, |
| And standing by these characters disclose |
| All that I seek; and whisper it as though |
| He were
afraid the birds, who cry aloud |
| Their momentary cries before it is dawn, |
| Would carry it away to blasphemous
men. |
