Poem Outlines :: BEETHOVEN

BEETHOVEN

Sidney Lanier

The argument of music,

I heard thy plea, O friend;

Who might debate with thee?

Heart was a little child, cried for the moon,

Brain was a man, said, nay.

Science is big, and Time is a-throb,

Hold thy heart, Heart.

Wan Silence lying lip on ground,

An outcast Angel from the Heaven of sound,

Prone and desolate

By the shut Gate.

A poet is a perpetual Adam: events pass before him, like the animals in the creation, and he names them.

"The Improvement of the Ground is the most Natural Obtaining of Riches: For it is our Great Mother's Blessing, the Earth: But it is slow."

[Poems on Agriculture]

How could I injure thee,
Thou art All and I am nought,
What harm, what harm could e'er be wrought
On thee by me?

Lo, he that hath helped me to do right (save by mere information upon which I act or not, as I please) he hath not done me a favor: he hath covertly hurt me: he hath insidiously deflowered the virginity of my will; I am thenceforth not a pure Me: I am partly another.

Each union of self and self is, once for all, incest and adultery and every other crime. Let me alone. God made me so, a man, individual, unit, whole, fully-appointed in myself. Again I cry to thee, O friend, let me alone.

The church having become fashionable is now grown crowded, and the Age will have to get up from its pew and go outside soon, if only for a little fresh air.

You wish me to argue whether Paul had a revelation: I do not care greatly; I have had none, but roses, trees, music, and a running stream, and Sirius.

[Credo, and Other Poems]

The sleep of each night is a confession of God. By whose will is it that my heart beat, my lung rose and fell, my blood went with freight and returned empty these eight hours?

Not mine, not mine.

Like to the grasshopper in the tall grass,
That sings to the mate he cannot see yet while,
I sing to thee, dear World;
For thou art my Mate, and peradventure thou wilt come; I wish to see thee.
Like to the lover under the window of his Love,
I serenade thee, dear World;
For thou art asleep and thou art my Love,
And perhaps thou wilt awake and show me thine eyes
And the beauty of thy face out of the window of thy house of Time.

So large, so blue is Harry's eye,
I think to that blue Heaven the souls do go
Of honest violets when they die.

Says Epictetus, at the close of his Chapter on PrÆcognitions: "I must speak in this way; excuse me, as you would excuse lovers: I am not my own master: I am mad."

[Credo, and Other Poems]

—Great shame came upon me.
I wended my way to my own house
And I was sorrowful all that night,
For the touch of man had bruised my manhood,
And in playing to be wise and a judge before men,
I found me foolish and a criminal before myself.

If that the mountain-measured earth
Had thousand-fold his mighty girth,
One violet would avail the dust
For righteous pride and just.
Then why do ye prattle of promise,
And why do ye cry this poet's young
And will give us more anon?

For he that hath written a song
Hath made life's clod a flower,
What question of short or long?
As the big earth is summed in a violet,
All Beauty may lie in a two-lined stave.
Let the clever ones write commentaries in verse.
As for us, we give you texts,
O World, we poets.
If you do not understand them now,
Behold, hereafter an army of commentators will come:
They will imitate, and explain it to you.

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