Then wilt thou, with thy fancies holy—
Wilt thou, faithless, fly from me?
With thy joy, thy melancholy,
Wilt thou thus relentless flee?
O Golden Time, O Human May,
Can nothing, Fleet One, thee restrain?
Must thy sweet river glide away
Into the eternal Ocean-Main?

The suns serene are lost and vanish'd
That wont the path of youth to gild,
And all the fair Ideals banish'd
From that wild heart they whilome fill'd.
Gone the divine and sweet believing
In dreams which Heaven itself unfurl'd!
What godlike shapes have years bereaving
Swept from this real work-day world!

As once, with tearful passion fired,
The Cyprian Sculptor clasp'd the stone,
Till the cold cheeks, delight-inspired,
Blush'd—to sweet life the marble grown;
So Youth's desire for Nature!—round
The Statue, so my arms I wreathed,
Till warmth and life in mine it found
And breath that poets breathe—it breathed.

With my own burning thoughts it burn'd;—
Its silence stirr'd to speech divine;—
Its lips my glowing kiss return'd;—
Its heart in beating answer'd mine!
How fair was then the flower—the tree!—
How silver-sweet the fountain's fall!
The soulless had a soul to me!
My life its own life lent to all!

The Universe of Things seem'd swelling
The panting heart to burst its bound,
And wandering Fancy found a dwelling
In every shape—thought—deed, and sound.
Germ'd in the mystic buds, reposing,
A whole creation slumber'd mute,
Alas, when from the buds unclosing,
How scant and blighted sprung the fruit!

How happy in his dreaming error,
His own gay valour for his wing,
Of not one care as yet in terror,
Did Youth upon his journey spring;
Till floods of balm, through air's dominion,
Bore upward to the faintest star—
For never aught to that bright pinion
Could dwell too high, or spread too far.

Though laden with delight, how lightly
The wanderer heavenward still could soar,
And aye the ways of life how brightly
The airy Pageant danced before!—
Love, showering gifts (life's sweetest) down,
Fortune, with golden garlands gay,
And Fame, with starbeams for a crown,
And Truth, whose dwelling is the Day.

Ah! midway soon, lost evermore,
Afar the blithe companions stray;
In vain their faithless steps explore,
As, one by one, they glide away.
Fleet Fortune was the first escaper—
The thirst for wisdom linger'd yet;
But doubts with many a gloomy vapour
The sun-shape of the Truth beset!

The holy crown which Fame was wreathing,
Behold! the mean man's temples wore!
And but for one short spring-day breathing,
Bloom'd Love—the Beautiful—no more!
And ever stiller yet, and ever
The barren path more lonely lay,
Till waning Hope could scarcely quiver
Along the darkly widening way.

Who, loving, linger'd yet to guide me,
When all her boon companions fled?
Who stands consoling still beside me,
And follows to the House of Dread?
Thine, Friendship! thine, the hand so tender—
Thine the balm dropping on the wound—
Thy task—the load more light to render,
O, earliest sought and soonest found!

And thou, so pleased with her uniting
To charm the soul-storm into peace,
Sweet Toil![6] in toil itself delighting,
That more it labor'd, less could cease:
Though but by grains, thou aid'st the pile
The vast Eternity uprears—
At least thou strik'st from Time, the while,
Life's debt—the minutes, days, and years![7]

[Footnote 6: That is to say—the Poet's occupation—The Ideal.]

[Footnote 7: Though the Ideal images of youth forsake us—the Ideal still remains to the Poet.—Nay, it is his task and his companion; unlike the worldly fantasies of fortune—fame, and love—the fantasies the Ideal creates are imperishable. While, as the occupation of his life, it pays off the debt of time; as the exalter of life, it contributes to the building of eternity.]

* * * * *

THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL LIFE.

The first title of this Poem was "The Realm of Shadow." Perhaps in the whole range of German poetry there exists no poem which presents greater difficulties to the English translator. The chief object of the present inadequate version has been to render the sense intelligible as well as the words. The attempt stands in need of all the indulgence which the German scholar will readily allow that a much abler translator might reasonably require.

1

For ever fair, for ever 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 sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

2

Seek'st 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 pluck'd the fruit of the unholy ground,
And so—was Hell's for ever!

3

The weavers of the web—the Fates—but sway
The matter and the things of clay;
Safe from each change that Time to matter gives,
Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray
With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day,
The FORM, the ARCHETYPE,[8] serenely lives.
Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast from thee, Earth, the bitter and the real,
High from this cramp'd and dungeon being, spring
Into the Realm of the Ideal!

[Footnote 8: "Die Gestalt"—Form, the Platonic Archetype.]

4

Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray,
Free from the clogs and taints of clay,
Hovers divine the Archetypal Man!
Like those dim phantom ghosts of life that gleam
And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,
While yet they stand in fields Elysian,
Ere to the flesh the Immortal ones descend—
If doubtful ever in the Actual life,
Each contest—here a victory crowns the end
Of every nobler strife.

5

Not from the strife itself to set thee free,
But more to nerve—doth Victory
Wave her rich garland from the Ideal clime.
Whate'er 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 attainÈd goal!

6

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 Valour 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 valour o'er his tribe prevails;
In life the victory only crowns the strong—
He who is feeble fails.

7

But as some stream, when from its source it gushes,
O'er rocks in storm and tumult rushes,
And smooths its after course to bright repose,
So, through the Shadow-Land of Beauty glides
The Life Ideal—on sweet silver tides
Glassing the day and night star as it flows—
Here, contest is the interchange of Love,
Here, rule is but the empire of the Grace;
Gone every foe, Peace folds her wings above
The holy, haunted place.

8

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, o'er 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 statute only to the chisel's stroke
Wakes from its marble cell.

9

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 labour 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 artist's human frailty merged and lost
In art's great victory won!

10

If human Sin confronts the rigid law
Of perfect Truth and Virtue,[9] 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 man's soul
And man's achievement, who hath ever past?
An ocean spreads between us and that goal,
Where anchor ne'er was cast!

11

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 soul's 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!

12

If, in the woes of Actual Human Life—
If thou could'st see the serpent strife
Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone—
Could'st 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 Man's great Sympathy.

13

But in the Ideal realm, aloof and far,
Where the calm Art's pure dwellers are,
Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan.
Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows—
Here, suffering's 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 Grief's dark veil, the peaceful blue
Of the sweet Moral Heaven.

[Footnote 9: The Law, i.e. the Kantian ideal of Truth and Virtue.
This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the
Kantian doctrine of morality.]

14

So, in the glorious parable, behold
How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old
Life's dreary path divine Alcides trode:
The hydra and the lion were his prey,
And to restore the friend he loved to day,
He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God;
And all the torments and the labours sore
Wroth Juno sent—meek majestic One,
With patient spirit and unquailing, bore,
Until the course was run—

15

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!

* * * * *

THE FAVOUR OF THE MOMENT.

And so we find ourselves once more
A ring, though varying yet serene,
The wreaths of song we wove of yore
Again we'll weave as fresh and green.
But who the God to whom we bring
The earliest tribute song can treasure?
Him, first of all the Gods, we sing
Whose blessing to ourselves is—pleasure!
For boots it on the votive shrine
That Ceres life itself bestows
Or liberal Bacchus gives the wine
That through the glass in purple glows—
If still there come not from the heaven
The spark that sets the hearth on flame;
If to the soul no fire is given,
And the sad heart remain the same?
Sudden as from the clouds must fall,
As from the lap of God, our bliss—
And still the mightiest lord of all,
Monarch of Time, the MOMENT is!
Since endless Nature first began
Whate'er of might the mind hath wrought—
Whate'er of Godlike comes from Man
Springs from one lightning-flash of thought!
For years the marble block awaits
The breath of life, beneath the soil—
A happy thought the work creates,
A moment's glance rewards the toil.
As suns that weave from out their blaze
The various colours round them given;
As Iris, on her arch of rays,
Hovers, and vanishes from heaven;
So fair, so fleeting every prize—
A lightning flash that shines and fades—
The Moment's brightness gilds the skies
And round the brightness close the shades.