How I lived, ere my human life beganIn this world of yours,—like you, made man,—When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?Come then around me, close about,World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubtOr deepest despondency keeps you out?Nowise! Before a word I speak,Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek—Diseased in the body, sick in soul,Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,—your wholeArray of despairs! Have I read the roll?All here? Attend, perpend! O StarOf my God Rephan, what wonders areIn thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far!Far from me, native to thy realm,Who shared its perfections which o'erwhelmMind to conceive. Let drift the helm,Let drive the sail, dare uuconfinedEmbark for the vastitude, O Mind,Of an absolute bliss! Leave earth behind!Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess:There, all 's at most—not more, not less:Nowhere deficiency nor excess.No want—whatever should be, is now:No growth—that 's change, and change comes—howTo royalty born with crown on brow?Nothing begins—so needs to end:Where fell it short at first? ExtendOnly the same, no change can mend!I use your language: mine—no wordOf its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,None felt distaste when better and worseWere uncontrastable: bless or curseWhat—in that uniform universe?Can your world's phrase, your sense of thingsForth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,No winters throughout its space. Time bringsNo hope, no fear: as to-day, shall beTo-morrow: advance or retreat need weAt our stand-still through eternity?All happy: needs must we so have been,Since who could be otherwise? All serene:What dark was to banish, what light to screen?Earth's rose is a bud that 's checked or growsAs beams may encourage or blasts oppose:Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose—Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spreadAbove and below and around—rose-red:No fellowship, each for itself instead.One better than I—would prove I lackedSomewhat: one worse were a jarring factDisturbing my faultlessly exact.How did it come to pass there lurkedSomehow a seed of change that workedObscure in my heart till perfection irked?—Till out of its peace at length grew strife—Hopes, fears, loves, hates,—obscurely rife,—My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?Was it Thou, above all lights that are,Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbarThe prison-gate of Rephan my Star?In me did such potency wake a pulseCould trouble tranquillity that lullsNot lashes inertion till throes convulseSoul's quietude into discontent?As when the completed rose bursts, rentBy ardors till forth from its orb are sentNew petals that mar—unmake the disk—Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk,Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk,Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spreadTill, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,The flower that slept woke a star instead?No mimic of Star Rephan! How longI stagnated there where weak and strong,The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,Are merged alike in a neutral Best,Can I tell? No more than at whose behestThe passion arose in my passive breast,And I yearned for no sameness but differenceIn thing and thing, that should shock my senseWith a want of worth in them all, and thenceStartle me up, by an InfiniteDiscovered above and below me—heightAnd depth alike to attract my flight,Repel my descent: by hate taught love.Oh, gain were indeed to see aboveSupremacy ever—to move, remove,Not reach—aspire yet never attainTo the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,—As each stage I left nor touched again.To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,Wring knowledge from ignorance,—just for this—To add one drop to a love-abyss!Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,You fear, you agonize, die: what then?Is an end to your life's work out of ken?Have you no assurance that, earth at end,Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mendIn the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?Why should I speak? You divine the test.When the trouble grew in my pregnant breastA voice said, "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"
How I lived, ere my human life beganIn this world of yours,—like you, made man,—When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?Come then around me, close about,World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubtOr deepest despondency keeps you out?Nowise! Before a word I speak,Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek—Diseased in the body, sick in soul,Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,—your wholeArray of despairs! Have I read the roll?All here? Attend, perpend! O StarOf my God Rephan, what wonders areIn thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far!Far from me, native to thy realm,Who shared its perfections which o'erwhelmMind to conceive. Let drift the helm,Let drive the sail, dare uuconfinedEmbark for the vastitude, O Mind,Of an absolute bliss! Leave earth behind!Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess:There, all 's at most—not more, not less:Nowhere deficiency nor excess.No want—whatever should be, is now:No growth—that 's change, and change comes—howTo royalty born with crown on brow?Nothing begins—so needs to end:Where fell it short at first? ExtendOnly the same, no change can mend!I use your language: mine—no wordOf its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,None felt distaste when better and worseWere uncontrastable: bless or curseWhat—in that uniform universe?Can your world's phrase, your sense of thingsForth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,No winters throughout its space. Time bringsNo hope, no fear: as to-day, shall beTo-morrow: advance or retreat need weAt our stand-still through eternity?All happy: needs must we so have been,Since who could be otherwise? All serene:What dark was to banish, what light to screen?Earth's rose is a bud that 's checked or growsAs beams may encourage or blasts oppose:Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose—Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spreadAbove and below and around—rose-red:No fellowship, each for itself instead.One better than I—would prove I lackedSomewhat: one worse were a jarring factDisturbing my faultlessly exact.How did it come to pass there lurkedSomehow a seed of change that workedObscure in my heart till perfection irked?—Till out of its peace at length grew strife—Hopes, fears, loves, hates,—obscurely rife,—My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?Was it Thou, above all lights that are,Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbarThe prison-gate of Rephan my Star?In me did such potency wake a pulseCould trouble tranquillity that lullsNot lashes inertion till throes convulseSoul's quietude into discontent?As when the completed rose bursts, rentBy ardors till forth from its orb are sentNew petals that mar—unmake the disk—Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk,Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk,Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spreadTill, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,The flower that slept woke a star instead?No mimic of Star Rephan! How longI stagnated there where weak and strong,The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,Are merged alike in a neutral Best,Can I tell? No more than at whose behestThe passion arose in my passive breast,And I yearned for no sameness but differenceIn thing and thing, that should shock my senseWith a want of worth in them all, and thenceStartle me up, by an InfiniteDiscovered above and below me—heightAnd depth alike to attract my flight,Repel my descent: by hate taught love.Oh, gain were indeed to see aboveSupremacy ever—to move, remove,Not reach—aspire yet never attainTo the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,—As each stage I left nor touched again.To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,Wring knowledge from ignorance,—just for this—To add one drop to a love-abyss!Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,You fear, you agonize, die: what then?Is an end to your life's work out of ken?Have you no assurance that, earth at end,Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mendIn the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?Why should I speak? You divine the test.When the trouble grew in my pregnant breastA voice said, "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"
How I lived, ere my human life beganIn this world of yours,—like you, made man,—When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?
How I lived, ere my human life began
In this world of yours,—like you, made man,—
When my home was the Star of my God Rephan?
Come then around me, close about,World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubtOr deepest despondency keeps you out?
Come then around me, close about,
World-weary earth-born ones! Darkest doubt
Or deepest despondency keeps you out?
Nowise! Before a word I speak,Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek—
Nowise! Before a word I speak,
Let my circle embrace your worn, your weak,
Brow-furrowed old age, youth's hollow cheek—
Diseased in the body, sick in soul,Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,—your wholeArray of despairs! Have I read the roll?
Diseased in the body, sick in soul,
Pinched poverty, satiate wealth,—your whole
Array of despairs! Have I read the roll?
All here? Attend, perpend! O StarOf my God Rephan, what wonders areIn thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far!
All here? Attend, perpend! O Star
Of my God Rephan, what wonders are
In thy brilliance fugitive, faint and far!
Far from me, native to thy realm,Who shared its perfections which o'erwhelmMind to conceive. Let drift the helm,
Far from me, native to thy realm,
Who shared its perfections which o'erwhelm
Mind to conceive. Let drift the helm,
Let drive the sail, dare uuconfinedEmbark for the vastitude, O Mind,Of an absolute bliss! Leave earth behind!
Let drive the sail, dare uuconfined
Embark for the vastitude, O Mind,
Of an absolute bliss! Leave earth behind!
Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess:There, all 's at most—not more, not less:Nowhere deficiency nor excess.
Here, by extremes, at a mean you guess:
There, all 's at most—not more, not less:
Nowhere deficiency nor excess.
No want—whatever should be, is now:No growth—that 's change, and change comes—howTo royalty born with crown on brow?
No want—whatever should be, is now:
No growth—that 's change, and change comes—how
To royalty born with crown on brow?
Nothing begins—so needs to end:Where fell it short at first? ExtendOnly the same, no change can mend!
Nothing begins—so needs to end:
Where fell it short at first? Extend
Only the same, no change can mend!
I use your language: mine—no wordOf its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,
I use your language: mine—no word
Of its wealth would help who spoke, who heard,
To a gleam of intelligence. None preferred,
None felt distaste when better and worseWere uncontrastable: bless or curseWhat—in that uniform universe?
None felt distaste when better and worse
Were uncontrastable: bless or curse
What—in that uniform universe?
Can your world's phrase, your sense of thingsForth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,No winters throughout its space. Time brings
Can your world's phrase, your sense of things
Forth-figure the Star of my God? No springs,
No winters throughout its space. Time brings
No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall beTo-morrow: advance or retreat need weAt our stand-still through eternity?
No hope, no fear: as to-day, shall be
To-morrow: advance or retreat need we
At our stand-still through eternity?
All happy: needs must we so have been,Since who could be otherwise? All serene:What dark was to banish, what light to screen?
All happy: needs must we so have been,
Since who could be otherwise? All serene:
What dark was to banish, what light to screen?
Earth's rose is a bud that 's checked or growsAs beams may encourage or blasts oppose:Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose—
Earth's rose is a bud that 's checked or grows
As beams may encourage or blasts oppose:
Our lives leapt forth, each a full-orbed rose—
Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spreadAbove and below and around—rose-red:No fellowship, each for itself instead.
Each rose sole rose in a sphere that spread
Above and below and around—rose-red:
No fellowship, each for itself instead.
One better than I—would prove I lackedSomewhat: one worse were a jarring factDisturbing my faultlessly exact.
One better than I—would prove I lacked
Somewhat: one worse were a jarring fact
Disturbing my faultlessly exact.
How did it come to pass there lurkedSomehow a seed of change that workedObscure in my heart till perfection irked?—
How did it come to pass there lurked
Somehow a seed of change that worked
Obscure in my heart till perfection irked?—
Till out of its peace at length grew strife—Hopes, fears, loves, hates,—obscurely rife,—My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?
Till out of its peace at length grew strife—
Hopes, fears, loves, hates,—obscurely rife,—
My life grown a-tremble to turn your life?
Was it Thou, above all lights that are,Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbarThe prison-gate of Rephan my Star?
Was it Thou, above all lights that are,
Prime Potency, did Thy hand unbar
The prison-gate of Rephan my Star?
In me did such potency wake a pulseCould trouble tranquillity that lullsNot lashes inertion till throes convulse
In me did such potency wake a pulse
Could trouble tranquillity that lulls
Not lashes inertion till throes convulse
Soul's quietude into discontent?As when the completed rose bursts, rentBy ardors till forth from its orb are sent
Soul's quietude into discontent?
As when the completed rose bursts, rent
By ardors till forth from its orb are sent
New petals that mar—unmake the disk—Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk,Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk,
New petals that mar—unmake the disk—
Spoil rondure: what in it ran brave risk,
Changed apathy's calm to strife, bright, brisk,
Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spreadTill, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,The flower that slept woke a star instead?
Pushed simple to compound, sprang and spread
Till, fresh-formed, faceted, floreted,
The flower that slept woke a star instead?
No mimic of Star Rephan! How longI stagnated there where weak and strong,The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
No mimic of Star Rephan! How long
I stagnated there where weak and strong,
The wise and the foolish, right and wrong,
Are merged alike in a neutral Best,Can I tell? No more than at whose behestThe passion arose in my passive breast,
Are merged alike in a neutral Best,
Can I tell? No more than at whose behest
The passion arose in my passive breast,
And I yearned for no sameness but differenceIn thing and thing, that should shock my senseWith a want of worth in them all, and thence
And I yearned for no sameness but difference
In thing and thing, that should shock my sense
With a want of worth in them all, and thence
Startle me up, by an InfiniteDiscovered above and below me—heightAnd depth alike to attract my flight,
Startle me up, by an Infinite
Discovered above and below me—height
And depth alike to attract my flight,
Repel my descent: by hate taught love.Oh, gain were indeed to see aboveSupremacy ever—to move, remove,
Repel my descent: by hate taught love.
Oh, gain were indeed to see above
Supremacy ever—to move, remove,
Not reach—aspire yet never attainTo the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,—As each stage I left nor touched again.
Not reach—aspire yet never attain
To the object aimed at! Scarce in vain,—
As each stage I left nor touched again.
To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,Wring knowledge from ignorance,—just for this—To add one drop to a love-abyss!
To suffer, did pangs bring the loved one bliss,
Wring knowledge from ignorance,—just for this—
To add one drop to a love-abyss!
Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,You fear, you agonize, die: what then?Is an end to your life's work out of ken?
Enough: for you doubt, you hope, O men,
You fear, you agonize, die: what then?
Is an end to your life's work out of ken?
Have you no assurance that, earth at end,Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mendIn the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?
Have you no assurance that, earth at end,
Wrong will prove right? Who made shall mend
In the higher sphere to which yearnings tend?
Why should I speak? You divine the test.When the trouble grew in my pregnant breastA voice said, "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?
Why should I speak? You divine the test.
When the trouble grew in my pregnant breast
A voice said, "So wouldst thou strive, not rest?
"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"
"Burn and not smoulder, win by worth,
Not rest content with a wealth that's dearth?
Thou art past Rephan, thy place be Earth!"
I know there shall dawn a day—Is it here on homely earth?Is it yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,That Power comes full in play?Is it here, with grass about,Under befriending trees,When shy buds venture out,And the air by mild degreesPuts winter's death past doubt?Is it up amid whirl and roarOf the elemental flameWhich star-flecks heaven's dark floor,That, new yet still the same,Full in play comes Power once more?Somewhere, below, above,Shall a day dawn—this I know—When Power, which vainly stroveMy weakness to o'erthrow,Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,I truly am, at last!For a veil is rent betweenMe and the truth which passedFitful, half-guessed, half-seen,Grasped at—not gained, held fast.I for my race and meShall apprehend life's law:In the legend of man shall seeWrit large what small I sawIn my life's; tale both agree.As the record from youth to ageOf my own, the single soul—So the world's wide book: one pageDeciphered explains the wholeOf our common heritage.How but from near to farShould knowledge proceed, increase?Try the clod ere test the star!Bring our inside strife to peaceEre we wage, on the outside, war!So, my annals thus begin:With body, to life awokeSoul, the immortal twinOf body which bore soul's yokeSince mortal and not akin.By means of the flesh, grown fit,Mind, in surview of things,Now soared, anon alitTo treasure its gatheringsFrom the ranged expanse—to-wit,Nature,—earth's, heaven's wide showWhich taught all hope, all fear:Acquainted with joy and woe,I could say, "Thus much is clear,Doubt annulled thus much: I know."All is effect of cause:As it would, has willed and donePower: and my mind's applauseGoes, passing laws each one,To Omnipotence, lord of laws."Head praises, but heart refrainsFrom loving's acknowledgment.Whole losses outweigh half-gains:Earth's good is with evil blent:Good struggles but evil reigns.Yet since Earth's good proved good—IncontrovertiblyWorth loving—I understoodHow evil—did mind descryPower's object to end pursued—Were haply as cloud acrossGood's orb, no orb itself:Mere mind—were it found at lossDid it play the tricksy elfAnd from life's gold purge the dross?Power is known infinite:Good struggles to be—at bestSeems—scanned by the human sight,Tried by the senses' test—Good palpably: but with rightTherefore to mind's awardOf loving, as power claims praise?Power—which finds naught too hard,Fulfilling itself all waysUnchecked, unchanged: while barred,Baffled, what good beganEnds evil on every side.To Power submissive manBreathes, "E'en as Thou art, abide!"While to good "Late-found, long-sought,"Would Power to a plenitudeBut liberate, but enlargeGood's strait confine,—renewedWere ever the heart's dischargeOf loving!" Else doubts intrude.For you dominate, stars all!For a sense informs you—brute,Bird, worm, fly, great and small,Each with your attributeOr low or majestical!Thou earth that embosomestOffspring of land and sea—How thy hills first sank to rest,How thy vales bred herb and treeWhich dizen thy mother-breast—Do I ask? "Be ignorantEver!" the answer clangs:Whereas if I plead world's want,Soul's sorrows and body's pangs,Play the human applicant,—Is a remedy far to seek?I question and find response:I—all men, strong or weak,Conceive and declare at onceFor each want its cure. "Power, speak!"Stop change, avert decayFix life fast, banish death,Eclipse from the star bid stay,Abridge of no moment's breathOne creature! Hence, Night, hail, Day!"What need to confess againNo problem this to solveBy impotence? Power, once plainProved Power—let on Power devolveGood's right to co-equal reign!Past mind's conception—Power!Do I seek how star, earth, beast,Bird, worm, fly, gain their dowerFor life's use, most and least?Back from the search I cower.Do I seek what heals all harm,Nay, hinders the harm at first,Saves earth? Speak, Power, the charm!Keep the life there unamercedBy chance, change, death's alarm!As promptly as mind conceives,Let Power in its turn declareSome law which wrong retrieves,Abolishes everywhereWhat thwarts, what irks, what grieves!Never to be! and yetHow easy it seems—to senseLike man's—if somehow metPower with its match—immenseLove, limitless, unbesetBy hindrance on every side!Conjectured, nowise known,Such may be: could man confideSuch would match—were Love but shownStript of the veils that hide—Power's self now manifest!So reads my record: thine,O world, how runs it? GuessedWere the purport of that prime line,Prophetic of all the rest!"In a beginning GodMade heaven and earth." Forth flashedKnowledge: from star to clodMan knew things: doubt abashedClosed its long period.Knowledge obtained Power praise.Had Good been manifest,Broke out in cloudless blaze,Unchequered as unrepressed,In all things Good at best—Then praise—all praise, no blame—Had hailed the perfection. No!As Power's display, the sameBe Good's—praise forth shall flowUnisonous in acclaim!Even as the world its life,So have I lived my own—Power seen with Love at strife,That sure, this dimly shown,—Good rare and evil rife.Whereof the effect be—faithThat, some far day, were foundRipeness in things now rathe,Wrong righted, each chain unbound,Renewal born out of scathe.Why faith—but to lift the load,To leaven the lump, where liesMind prostrate through knowledge owedTo the loveless Power it triesTo withstand, how vain! In flowedEver resistless fact:No more than the passive clayDisputes the potter's act,Could the whelmed mind disobeyKnowledge the cataract.But, perfect in every part,Has the potter's moulded shape,Leap of man's quickened heart,Throe of his thought's escape,Stings of his soul which dartThrough the barrier of flesh, till keenShe climbs from the calm and clear,Through turbidity all between,From the known to the unknown here,Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?Then life is—to wake not sleep,Rise and not rest, but pressFrom earth's level where blindly creepThings perfected, more or less,To the heaven's height, far and steep,Where, amid what strifes and stormsMay wait the adventurous quest,Power is Love—transports, transformsWho aspired from worst to best,Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.I have faith such end shall be:From the first, Power was—I knew,Life has made clear to meThat, strive but for closer view,Love were as plain to see.When see? When there dawns a day,If not on the homely earth,Then yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,And Power comes full in play.
I know there shall dawn a day—Is it here on homely earth?Is it yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,That Power comes full in play?Is it here, with grass about,Under befriending trees,When shy buds venture out,And the air by mild degreesPuts winter's death past doubt?Is it up amid whirl and roarOf the elemental flameWhich star-flecks heaven's dark floor,That, new yet still the same,Full in play comes Power once more?Somewhere, below, above,Shall a day dawn—this I know—When Power, which vainly stroveMy weakness to o'erthrow,Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,I truly am, at last!For a veil is rent betweenMe and the truth which passedFitful, half-guessed, half-seen,Grasped at—not gained, held fast.I for my race and meShall apprehend life's law:In the legend of man shall seeWrit large what small I sawIn my life's; tale both agree.As the record from youth to ageOf my own, the single soul—So the world's wide book: one pageDeciphered explains the wholeOf our common heritage.How but from near to farShould knowledge proceed, increase?Try the clod ere test the star!Bring our inside strife to peaceEre we wage, on the outside, war!So, my annals thus begin:With body, to life awokeSoul, the immortal twinOf body which bore soul's yokeSince mortal and not akin.By means of the flesh, grown fit,Mind, in surview of things,Now soared, anon alitTo treasure its gatheringsFrom the ranged expanse—to-wit,Nature,—earth's, heaven's wide showWhich taught all hope, all fear:Acquainted with joy and woe,I could say, "Thus much is clear,Doubt annulled thus much: I know."All is effect of cause:As it would, has willed and donePower: and my mind's applauseGoes, passing laws each one,To Omnipotence, lord of laws."Head praises, but heart refrainsFrom loving's acknowledgment.Whole losses outweigh half-gains:Earth's good is with evil blent:Good struggles but evil reigns.Yet since Earth's good proved good—IncontrovertiblyWorth loving—I understoodHow evil—did mind descryPower's object to end pursued—Were haply as cloud acrossGood's orb, no orb itself:Mere mind—were it found at lossDid it play the tricksy elfAnd from life's gold purge the dross?Power is known infinite:Good struggles to be—at bestSeems—scanned by the human sight,Tried by the senses' test—Good palpably: but with rightTherefore to mind's awardOf loving, as power claims praise?Power—which finds naught too hard,Fulfilling itself all waysUnchecked, unchanged: while barred,Baffled, what good beganEnds evil on every side.To Power submissive manBreathes, "E'en as Thou art, abide!"While to good "Late-found, long-sought,"Would Power to a plenitudeBut liberate, but enlargeGood's strait confine,—renewedWere ever the heart's dischargeOf loving!" Else doubts intrude.For you dominate, stars all!For a sense informs you—brute,Bird, worm, fly, great and small,Each with your attributeOr low or majestical!Thou earth that embosomestOffspring of land and sea—How thy hills first sank to rest,How thy vales bred herb and treeWhich dizen thy mother-breast—Do I ask? "Be ignorantEver!" the answer clangs:Whereas if I plead world's want,Soul's sorrows and body's pangs,Play the human applicant,—Is a remedy far to seek?I question and find response:I—all men, strong or weak,Conceive and declare at onceFor each want its cure. "Power, speak!"Stop change, avert decayFix life fast, banish death,Eclipse from the star bid stay,Abridge of no moment's breathOne creature! Hence, Night, hail, Day!"What need to confess againNo problem this to solveBy impotence? Power, once plainProved Power—let on Power devolveGood's right to co-equal reign!Past mind's conception—Power!Do I seek how star, earth, beast,Bird, worm, fly, gain their dowerFor life's use, most and least?Back from the search I cower.Do I seek what heals all harm,Nay, hinders the harm at first,Saves earth? Speak, Power, the charm!Keep the life there unamercedBy chance, change, death's alarm!As promptly as mind conceives,Let Power in its turn declareSome law which wrong retrieves,Abolishes everywhereWhat thwarts, what irks, what grieves!Never to be! and yetHow easy it seems—to senseLike man's—if somehow metPower with its match—immenseLove, limitless, unbesetBy hindrance on every side!Conjectured, nowise known,Such may be: could man confideSuch would match—were Love but shownStript of the veils that hide—Power's self now manifest!So reads my record: thine,O world, how runs it? GuessedWere the purport of that prime line,Prophetic of all the rest!"In a beginning GodMade heaven and earth." Forth flashedKnowledge: from star to clodMan knew things: doubt abashedClosed its long period.Knowledge obtained Power praise.Had Good been manifest,Broke out in cloudless blaze,Unchequered as unrepressed,In all things Good at best—Then praise—all praise, no blame—Had hailed the perfection. No!As Power's display, the sameBe Good's—praise forth shall flowUnisonous in acclaim!Even as the world its life,So have I lived my own—Power seen with Love at strife,That sure, this dimly shown,—Good rare and evil rife.Whereof the effect be—faithThat, some far day, were foundRipeness in things now rathe,Wrong righted, each chain unbound,Renewal born out of scathe.Why faith—but to lift the load,To leaven the lump, where liesMind prostrate through knowledge owedTo the loveless Power it triesTo withstand, how vain! In flowedEver resistless fact:No more than the passive clayDisputes the potter's act,Could the whelmed mind disobeyKnowledge the cataract.But, perfect in every part,Has the potter's moulded shape,Leap of man's quickened heart,Throe of his thought's escape,Stings of his soul which dartThrough the barrier of flesh, till keenShe climbs from the calm and clear,Through turbidity all between,From the known to the unknown here,Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?Then life is—to wake not sleep,Rise and not rest, but pressFrom earth's level where blindly creepThings perfected, more or less,To the heaven's height, far and steep,Where, amid what strifes and stormsMay wait the adventurous quest,Power is Love—transports, transformsWho aspired from worst to best,Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.I have faith such end shall be:From the first, Power was—I knew,Life has made clear to meThat, strive but for closer view,Love were as plain to see.When see? When there dawns a day,If not on the homely earth,Then yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,And Power comes full in play.
I know there shall dawn a day—Is it here on homely earth?Is it yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,That Power comes full in play?
I know there shall dawn a day
—Is it here on homely earth?
Is it yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
That Power comes full in play?
Is it here, with grass about,Under befriending trees,When shy buds venture out,And the air by mild degreesPuts winter's death past doubt?
Is it here, with grass about,
Under befriending trees,
When shy buds venture out,
And the air by mild degrees
Puts winter's death past doubt?
Is it up amid whirl and roarOf the elemental flameWhich star-flecks heaven's dark floor,That, new yet still the same,Full in play comes Power once more?
Is it up amid whirl and roar
Of the elemental flame
Which star-flecks heaven's dark floor,
That, new yet still the same,
Full in play comes Power once more?
Somewhere, below, above,Shall a day dawn—this I know—When Power, which vainly stroveMy weakness to o'erthrow,Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,
Somewhere, below, above,
Shall a day dawn—this I know—
When Power, which vainly strove
My weakness to o'erthrow,
Shall triumph. I breathe, I move,
I truly am, at last!For a veil is rent betweenMe and the truth which passedFitful, half-guessed, half-seen,Grasped at—not gained, held fast.
I truly am, at last!
For a veil is rent between
Me and the truth which passed
Fitful, half-guessed, half-seen,
Grasped at—not gained, held fast.
I for my race and meShall apprehend life's law:In the legend of man shall seeWrit large what small I sawIn my life's; tale both agree.
I for my race and me
Shall apprehend life's law:
In the legend of man shall see
Writ large what small I saw
In my life's; tale both agree.
As the record from youth to ageOf my own, the single soul—So the world's wide book: one pageDeciphered explains the wholeOf our common heritage.
As the record from youth to age
Of my own, the single soul—
So the world's wide book: one page
Deciphered explains the whole
Of our common heritage.
How but from near to farShould knowledge proceed, increase?Try the clod ere test the star!Bring our inside strife to peaceEre we wage, on the outside, war!
How but from near to far
Should knowledge proceed, increase?
Try the clod ere test the star!
Bring our inside strife to peace
Ere we wage, on the outside, war!
So, my annals thus begin:With body, to life awokeSoul, the immortal twinOf body which bore soul's yokeSince mortal and not akin.
So, my annals thus begin:
With body, to life awoke
Soul, the immortal twin
Of body which bore soul's yoke
Since mortal and not akin.
By means of the flesh, grown fit,Mind, in surview of things,Now soared, anon alitTo treasure its gatheringsFrom the ranged expanse—to-wit,
By means of the flesh, grown fit,
Mind, in surview of things,
Now soared, anon alit
To treasure its gatherings
From the ranged expanse—to-wit,
Nature,—earth's, heaven's wide showWhich taught all hope, all fear:Acquainted with joy and woe,I could say, "Thus much is clear,Doubt annulled thus much: I know.
Nature,—earth's, heaven's wide show
Which taught all hope, all fear:
Acquainted with joy and woe,
I could say, "Thus much is clear,
Doubt annulled thus much: I know.
"All is effect of cause:As it would, has willed and donePower: and my mind's applauseGoes, passing laws each one,To Omnipotence, lord of laws."
"All is effect of cause:
As it would, has willed and done
Power: and my mind's applause
Goes, passing laws each one,
To Omnipotence, lord of laws."
Head praises, but heart refrainsFrom loving's acknowledgment.Whole losses outweigh half-gains:Earth's good is with evil blent:Good struggles but evil reigns.
Head praises, but heart refrains
From loving's acknowledgment.
Whole losses outweigh half-gains:
Earth's good is with evil blent:
Good struggles but evil reigns.
Yet since Earth's good proved good—IncontrovertiblyWorth loving—I understoodHow evil—did mind descryPower's object to end pursued—
Yet since Earth's good proved good—
Incontrovertibly
Worth loving—I understood
How evil—did mind descry
Power's object to end pursued—
Were haply as cloud acrossGood's orb, no orb itself:Mere mind—were it found at lossDid it play the tricksy elfAnd from life's gold purge the dross?
Were haply as cloud across
Good's orb, no orb itself:
Mere mind—were it found at loss
Did it play the tricksy elf
And from life's gold purge the dross?
Power is known infinite:Good struggles to be—at bestSeems—scanned by the human sight,Tried by the senses' test—Good palpably: but with right
Power is known infinite:
Good struggles to be—at best
Seems—scanned by the human sight,
Tried by the senses' test—
Good palpably: but with right
Therefore to mind's awardOf loving, as power claims praise?Power—which finds naught too hard,Fulfilling itself all waysUnchecked, unchanged: while barred,
Therefore to mind's award
Of loving, as power claims praise?
Power—which finds naught too hard,
Fulfilling itself all ways
Unchecked, unchanged: while barred,
Baffled, what good beganEnds evil on every side.To Power submissive manBreathes, "E'en as Thou art, abide!"While to good "Late-found, long-sought,
Baffled, what good began
Ends evil on every side.
To Power submissive man
Breathes, "E'en as Thou art, abide!"
While to good "Late-found, long-sought,
"Would Power to a plenitudeBut liberate, but enlargeGood's strait confine,—renewedWere ever the heart's dischargeOf loving!" Else doubts intrude.
"Would Power to a plenitude
But liberate, but enlarge
Good's strait confine,—renewed
Were ever the heart's discharge
Of loving!" Else doubts intrude.
For you dominate, stars all!For a sense informs you—brute,Bird, worm, fly, great and small,Each with your attributeOr low or majestical!
For you dominate, stars all!
For a sense informs you—brute,
Bird, worm, fly, great and small,
Each with your attribute
Or low or majestical!
Thou earth that embosomestOffspring of land and sea—How thy hills first sank to rest,How thy vales bred herb and treeWhich dizen thy mother-breast—
Thou earth that embosomest
Offspring of land and sea—
How thy hills first sank to rest,
How thy vales bred herb and tree
Which dizen thy mother-breast—
Do I ask? "Be ignorantEver!" the answer clangs:Whereas if I plead world's want,Soul's sorrows and body's pangs,Play the human applicant,—
Do I ask? "Be ignorant
Ever!" the answer clangs:
Whereas if I plead world's want,
Soul's sorrows and body's pangs,
Play the human applicant,—
Is a remedy far to seek?I question and find response:I—all men, strong or weak,Conceive and declare at onceFor each want its cure. "Power, speak!
Is a remedy far to seek?
I question and find response:
I—all men, strong or weak,
Conceive and declare at once
For each want its cure. "Power, speak!
"Stop change, avert decayFix life fast, banish death,Eclipse from the star bid stay,Abridge of no moment's breathOne creature! Hence, Night, hail, Day!"
"Stop change, avert decay
Fix life fast, banish death,
Eclipse from the star bid stay,
Abridge of no moment's breath
One creature! Hence, Night, hail, Day!"
What need to confess againNo problem this to solveBy impotence? Power, once plainProved Power—let on Power devolveGood's right to co-equal reign!
What need to confess again
No problem this to solve
By impotence? Power, once plain
Proved Power—let on Power devolve
Good's right to co-equal reign!
Past mind's conception—Power!Do I seek how star, earth, beast,Bird, worm, fly, gain their dowerFor life's use, most and least?Back from the search I cower.
Past mind's conception—Power!
Do I seek how star, earth, beast,
Bird, worm, fly, gain their dower
For life's use, most and least?
Back from the search I cower.
Do I seek what heals all harm,Nay, hinders the harm at first,Saves earth? Speak, Power, the charm!Keep the life there unamercedBy chance, change, death's alarm!
Do I seek what heals all harm,
Nay, hinders the harm at first,
Saves earth? Speak, Power, the charm!
Keep the life there unamerced
By chance, change, death's alarm!
As promptly as mind conceives,Let Power in its turn declareSome law which wrong retrieves,Abolishes everywhereWhat thwarts, what irks, what grieves!
As promptly as mind conceives,
Let Power in its turn declare
Some law which wrong retrieves,
Abolishes everywhere
What thwarts, what irks, what grieves!
Never to be! and yetHow easy it seems—to senseLike man's—if somehow metPower with its match—immenseLove, limitless, unbeset
Never to be! and yet
How easy it seems—to sense
Like man's—if somehow met
Power with its match—immense
Love, limitless, unbeset
By hindrance on every side!Conjectured, nowise known,Such may be: could man confideSuch would match—were Love but shownStript of the veils that hide—
By hindrance on every side!
Conjectured, nowise known,
Such may be: could man confide
Such would match—were Love but shown
Stript of the veils that hide—
Power's self now manifest!So reads my record: thine,O world, how runs it? GuessedWere the purport of that prime line,Prophetic of all the rest!
Power's self now manifest!
So reads my record: thine,
O world, how runs it? Guessed
Were the purport of that prime line,
Prophetic of all the rest!
"In a beginning GodMade heaven and earth." Forth flashedKnowledge: from star to clodMan knew things: doubt abashedClosed its long period.
"In a beginning God
Made heaven and earth." Forth flashed
Knowledge: from star to clod
Man knew things: doubt abashed
Closed its long period.
Knowledge obtained Power praise.Had Good been manifest,Broke out in cloudless blaze,Unchequered as unrepressed,In all things Good at best—
Knowledge obtained Power praise.
Had Good been manifest,
Broke out in cloudless blaze,
Unchequered as unrepressed,
In all things Good at best—
Then praise—all praise, no blame—Had hailed the perfection. No!As Power's display, the sameBe Good's—praise forth shall flowUnisonous in acclaim!
Then praise—all praise, no blame—
Had hailed the perfection. No!
As Power's display, the same
Be Good's—praise forth shall flow
Unisonous in acclaim!
Even as the world its life,So have I lived my own—Power seen with Love at strife,That sure, this dimly shown,—Good rare and evil rife.
Even as the world its life,
So have I lived my own—
Power seen with Love at strife,
That sure, this dimly shown,
—Good rare and evil rife.
Whereof the effect be—faithThat, some far day, were foundRipeness in things now rathe,Wrong righted, each chain unbound,Renewal born out of scathe.
Whereof the effect be—faith
That, some far day, were found
Ripeness in things now rathe,
Wrong righted, each chain unbound,
Renewal born out of scathe.
Why faith—but to lift the load,To leaven the lump, where liesMind prostrate through knowledge owedTo the loveless Power it triesTo withstand, how vain! In flowed
Why faith—but to lift the load,
To leaven the lump, where lies
Mind prostrate through knowledge owed
To the loveless Power it tries
To withstand, how vain! In flowed
Ever resistless fact:No more than the passive clayDisputes the potter's act,Could the whelmed mind disobeyKnowledge the cataract.
Ever resistless fact:
No more than the passive clay
Disputes the potter's act,
Could the whelmed mind disobey
Knowledge the cataract.
But, perfect in every part,Has the potter's moulded shape,Leap of man's quickened heart,Throe of his thought's escape,Stings of his soul which dart
But, perfect in every part,
Has the potter's moulded shape,
Leap of man's quickened heart,
Throe of his thought's escape,
Stings of his soul which dart
Through the barrier of flesh, till keenShe climbs from the calm and clear,Through turbidity all between,From the known to the unknown here,Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
Through the barrier of flesh, till keen
She climbs from the calm and clear,
Through turbidity all between,
From the known to the unknown here,
Heaven's "Shall be," from Earth's "Has been"?
Then life is—to wake not sleep,Rise and not rest, but pressFrom earth's level where blindly creepThings perfected, more or less,To the heaven's height, far and steep,
Then life is—to wake not sleep,
Rise and not rest, but press
From earth's level where blindly creep
Things perfected, more or less,
To the heaven's height, far and steep,
Where, amid what strifes and stormsMay wait the adventurous quest,Power is Love—transports, transformsWho aspired from worst to best,Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.
Where, amid what strifes and storms
May wait the adventurous quest,
Power is Love—transports, transforms
Who aspired from worst to best,
Sought the soul's world, spurned the worms'.
I have faith such end shall be:From the first, Power was—I knew,Life has made clear to meThat, strive but for closer view,Love were as plain to see.
I have faith such end shall be:
From the first, Power was—I knew,
Life has made clear to me
That, strive but for closer view,
Love were as plain to see.
When see? When there dawns a day,If not on the homely earth,Then yonder, worlds away,Where the strange and new have birth,And Power comes full in play.
When see? When there dawns a day,
If not on the homely earth,
Then yonder, worlds away,
Where the strange and new have birth,
And Power comes full in play.
In regard to the third verse of this poem thePall Mall Gazetteof February 1, 1890, related this incident: "One evening, just before his death-illness, the poet was reading this from a proof to his daughter-in-law and sister. He said: 'It almost looks like bragging to say this, and as if I ought to cancel it; but it's the simple truth; and as it's true, it shall stand.'"
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,When you set your fancies free,Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,—Pity me?Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!What had I on earth to doWith the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel—Being—who?One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,Sleep to wake.No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-timeGreet the unseen with a cheer!Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare everThere as here!"
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,When you set your fancies free,Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,—Pity me?Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!What had I on earth to doWith the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel—Being—who?One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,Sleep to wake.No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-timeGreet the unseen with a cheer!Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare everThere as here!"
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,When you set your fancies free,Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,—Pity me?
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where—by death, fools think, imprisoned—
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
—Pity me?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!What had I on earth to doWith the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel—Being—who?
Oh to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
—Being—who?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,Never doubted clouds would break,Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,Sleep to wake.
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-timeGreet the unseen with a cheer!Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare everThere as here!"
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry "Speed,—fight on, fare ever
There as here!"
Shelley's influence on Browning is so frequently referred to, that it seems best, inasmuch as thisEssayis the only distinct piece of prose in Browning's writings, to print it here in the Appendix to hisComplete Poetic and Dramatic Writings. The paper was written in 1852 at the request of Mr. Moxon, the publisher, under the circumstances named in the first paragraph of theEssay. Before the book was actually published, it was discovered to be a fabrication and was immediately suppressed. A very few copies only escaped the publisher's hands; apparently, those only which went to the depositories of copyright matter. The present copy is taken from the one issued in 1888 by the Shelley Society, London, under the editorship of W. Tyas Harden.
An opportunity having presented itself for the acquisition of a series of unedited letters by Shelley, all more or less directly supplementary to and illustrative of the collection already published by Mr. Moxon, that gentleman has decided on securing them. They will prove an acceptable addition to a body of correspondence, the value of which, towards a right understanding of its author's purpose and work, may be said to exceed that of any similar contribution exhibiting the worldly relations of a poet whose genius has operated by a different law.
Doubtless we accept gladly the biography of an objective poet, as the phrase now goes; one whose endeavor has been to reproduce things external (whether the phenomena of the scenic universe, or the manifested action of the human heart and brain), with an immediate reference, in every case, to the common eye and apprehension of his fellow-men, assumed capable of receiving and profiting by this reproduction. It has been obtained through the poet's double faculty of seeing external objects more clearly, widely, and deeply than is possible to the average mind, at the same time that he is so acquainted and in sympathy with its narrower comprehension as to be careful to supply it with no other materials than it can combine into an intelligible whole. The auditory of such a poet will include, not only the intelligences which, save for such assistance, would have missed the deeper meaning and enjoyment of the original objects, but also the spirits of a like endowment with his own, who, by means of his abstract, can forthwith pass to the reality it was made from, and either corroborate their impressions of things known already, or supply themselves with new from whatever shows in the inexhaustible variety of existence may have hitherto escaped their knowledge. Such a poet is properly the ποιητής, the fashioner; and the thing fashioned, his poetry, will of necessity be substantive, projected from himself and distinct. We are ignorant what the inventor ofOthelloconceived of that fact as he beheld it in completeness, how he accounted for it, under what known law he registered its nature, or to what unknown law he traced its coincidence. We learn only what he intended we should learn by that particular exercise of his power,—the fact itself,—which, with its infinite significances, each of us receives for the first time as a creation, and is hereafter left to deal with, as, in proportion to his own intelligence, he best may. We are ignorant, and would fain be otherwise.
Doubtless, with respect to such a poet, we covet his biography. We desire to look back upon the process of gathering together in a lifetime the materials of the work we behold entire; of elaborating, perhaps under difficulty and with hindrance, all that is familiar to our admiration in the apparent facility of success. And the inner impulse of this effort and operation, what induced it? Did a soul's delight in its own extended sphere of vision set it, for the gratification of an insuppressible power, on labor, as other men are set on rest? Or did a sense of duty or of love lead it to communicate its own sensations to mankind? Did an irresistible sympathy with men compel it to bring down and suit its own provision of knowledge and beauty to their narrow scope? Did the personality of such an one stand like an open watch-tower in the midst of the territory it is erected to gaze on, and were the storms and calms, the stars and meteors, its watchman was wont to report of, the habitual variegation of his every-day life, as they glanced across its open door or lay reflected on its four-square parapet? Or did some sunken and darkened chamber of imagery witness, in the artificial illumination of every storied compartment we are permitted to contemplate, how rare and precious were the outlooks through here and there an embrasure upon a world beyond, and how blankly would have pressed on the artificer the boundary of his daily life, except for the amorous diligence with which he had rendered permanent by art whatever came to diversify the gloom? Still, fraught with instruction and interest as suchdetails undoubtedly are, we can, if needs be, dispense with them. The man passes, the work remains. The work speaks for itself, as we say; and the biography of the worker is no more necessary to an understanding or enjoyment of it than is a model or anatomy of some tropical tree to the right tasting of the fruit we are familiar with on the market-stall,—or a geologist's map and stratification to the prompt recognition of the hill-top, our landmark of every day.
"We turn with stronger needs to the genius of an opposite tendency,—the subjective poet of modern classification. He, gifted like the objective poet with the fuller perception of nature and man, is impelled to embody the thing he perceives, not so much with reference to the many below as to the one above him, the supreme Intelligence which apprehends all things in their absolute truth,—an ultimate view ever aspired to, if but partially attained, by the poet's own soul. Not what man sees, but what God sees,—theIdeasof Plato, seeds of creation lying burningly on the Divine Hand,—it is toward these that he struggles. Not with the combination of humanity in action, but with the primal elements of humanity, he has to do; and he digs where he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute Mind, according to the intuitions of which he desires to perceive and speak. Such a poet does not deal habitually with the picturesque groupings and tempestuous tossings of the forest tress, but with their roots and fibres naked to the chalk and stone. He does not paint pictures and hang them on the walls, but rather carries them on the retina of his own eyes: we must look deep into his human eyes to see those pictures on them. He is rather a seer, accordingly, than a fashioner, and what he produces will be less a work than an effluence. That effluence cannot be easily considered in abstraction from his personality,—being indeed the very radiance and aroma of his personality, projected from it but not separated. Therefore, in our approach to the poetry, we necessarily approach the personality of the poet; in apprehending it we apprehend him, and certainly we cannot love it without loving him. Both for love's and for understanding's sake we desire to know him, and, as readers of his poetry, must be readers of his biography also.
I shall observe, in passing, that it seems not so much from any essential distinction in the faculty of the two poets, or in the nature of the objects contemplated by either, as in the more immediate adaptability of these objects to the distinct purpose of each, that the objective poet, in his appeal to the aggregate human mind, chooses to deal with the doings of men (the result of which dealing, in its pure form, when even description, as suggesting a describer, is dispensed with, is what we call dramatic poetry); while the subjective poet, whose study has been himself, appealing through himself to the absolute Divine mind, prefers to dwell upon those external scenic appearances which strike out most abundantly and uninterruptedly his inner light and power, selects that silence of the earth and sea in which he can best hear the beating of his individual heart, and leaves the noisy, complex, yet imperfect exhibitions of nature in the manifold experience of man around him, which serve only to distract and suppress the working of his brain. These opposite tendencies of genius will be more readily descried in their artistic effect than in their moral spring and cause. Pushed to an extreme and manifested as a deformity, they will be seen plainest of all in the fault of either artist when, subsidiarily to the human interest of his work, his occasional illustrations from scenic nature are introduced as in the earlier works of the originative painters,—men and women filling the foreground with consummate mastery, while mountain, grove, and rivulet show like an anticipatory revenge on that succeeding race of landscape-painters, whose "figures" disturb the perfection of their earth and sky. It would be idle to inquire, of these two kinds of poetic faculty in operation, which is the higher or even rarer endowment. If the subjective might seem to be the ultimate requirement of every age, the objective, in the strictest state, must still retain its original value. For it is with this world, as starting point and basis alike, that we shall always have to concern ourselves: the world is not to be learned and thrown aside, but reverted to and relearned. The spiritual comprehension may be infinitely subtilized, but the raw material it operates upon must remain. There may be no end of the poets who communicate to us what they see in an object with reference to their own individuality: what it was before they saw it, in reference to the aggregate human mind, will be as desirable to know as ever. Nor is there any reason why these two modes of poetic faculty may not issue hereafter from the same poet in successive perfect works, examples of which, according to what are now considered the exigencies of art, we have hitherto possessed in distinct individuals only. A mere running in of the one faculty upon the other is, of course, the ordinary circumstance. Far more rarely it happens that either is found so decidedly prominent and superior as to be pronounced comparatively pure; while of the perfect shield, with the gold and the silver side set up for all comers to challenge, there has yet been no instance. Either faculty in its eminent state is doubtless conceded by Providence as a best gift to men, according to their especial want. There is a time when the general eye has, so to speak, absorbed its fill of the phenomena around it, whether spiritual or material, and desires rather to learn the exacter significance of what it possesses than to receive any augmentation of what is possessed. Then is the opportunity for the poet of loftier vision to lift his fellows, with their half-apprehensions, up to his own sphere, by intensifying the import of details and rounding the universal meaning. The influence of such an achievement will not soon die out. A tribe of successors(Homerides), working more or less in the same spirit, dwell on his discoveries and reinforce his doctrine; till, at unawares, the world is found to be subsisting wholly on the shadow of a reality, on sentiments diluted from passions, on the tradition of a fact, the convention of a moral, the straw of last year's harvest. Then is the imperative call for the appearance of another sort of poet, who shall at once replace this intellectual rumination of food swallowed long ago, by a supply of the fresh and living swathe; getting at new substance by breaking up the assumed wholes into parts of independent and unclassed value, careless of the unknown laws for recombining them (it will be the business of yet another poet to suggest those hereafter), prodigal of objects for men's outer and not inner sight; shaping for their uses a new and different creation from the last, which it displaces by the right of life over death,—to endure until, in the inevitable process, its very sufficiency to itself shall require at length an exposition of its affinity to something higher, when the positive yet conflicting facts shall again precipitate themselves under a harmonizing law, and one more degree will be apparent for a poet to climb in that mighty ladder, of which, however cloud-involved and undefined may glimmer the topmost step, the world dares no longer doubt that its gradations ascend.
Such being the two kinds of artists, it is naturally, as I have shown, with the biography of the subjective poet that we have the deeper concern. Apart from his recorded life altogether, we might fail to determine with satisfactory precision to what class his productions belong, and what amount of praise is assignable to the producer. Certainly, in the fact of any conspicuous achievement of genius, philosophy no less than sympathetic instinct warrants our belief in a great moral purpose having mainly inspired even where it does not visibly look out of the same. Greatness in a work suggests an adequate instrumentality; and none of the lower incitements, however they may avail to initiate or even effect many considerable displays of power, simulating the nobler inspiration to which they are mistakenly referred, have been found able, under the ordinary conditions of humanity, to task themselves to the end of so exacting a performance as a poet's complete work. As soon will the galvanism, that provokes to violent action the muscles of a corpse, induce it to cross the chamber steadily: sooner. The love of displaying power for the display's sake; the love of riches, of distinction, of notoriety; the desire of a triumph over rivals, and the vanity in the applause of friends,—each and all of such whetted appetites grow intenser by exercise, and increasingly sagacious as to the best and readiest means of self-appeasement: while for any of their ends, whether the money or the pointed finger of the crowd, or the flattery and hate to heart's content, there are cheaper prices to pay, they will all find soon enough, than the bestowment of a life upon a labor hard, slow, and not sure. Also, assuming the proper moral aim to have produced a work, there are many and various states of an aim: it may be more intense than clear-sighted, or too easily satisfied with a lower field of activity than a steadier aspiration would reach. All the bad poetry in the world (accounted poetry, that is, by its affinities) will be found to result from some one of the infinite degrees of discrepancy between the attributes of the poet's soul, occasioning a want of correspondency between his work and the verities of nature,—issuing in poetry, false under whatever form, which shows a thing, not as it is to mankind generally, nor as it is to the particular describer, but as it is supposed to be for some unreal neutral mood, midway between both and of value to neither, and living its brief minute simply through the indolence of whoever accepts it or his incapacity to denounce a cheat. Although of such depths of failure there can be no question here, we must in every case betake ourselves to the review of a poet's life ere we determine some of the nicer questions concerning his poetry,—more especially if the performance we seek to estimate aright has been obstructed and cut short of completion by circumstances,—a disastrous youth or a premature death. We may learn from the biography whether his spirit invariably saw and spoke from the last height to which it had attained. An absolute vision is not for this world, but we are permitted a continual approximation to it, every degree of which in the individual, provided it exceed the attainment of the masses, must procure him a clear advantage. Did the poet ever attain to a higher platform than where he rested and exhibited a result? Did he know more than he spoke of?
I concede, however, in respect to this subject of our study as well as some few other illustrious examples, that the unmistakable quality of the verse would be evidence enough, under usual circumstances, not only of the kind and degree of the intellectual but of the moral constitution of Shelley; the whole personality of the poet shining forward from the poems, without much need of going further to seek it. The "Remains"—produced within a period of ten years, and at a season of life when other men of at all comparable genius have hardly done more than prepare the eye for future sight and the tongue for speech—present us with the complete enginery of a poet, as signal in the excellence of its several aptitudes as transcendent in the combination of effects,—examples, in fact, of the whole poet's function of beholding with an understanding keenness the universe, nature and man, in their actual state of perfection in imperfection; of the whole poet's virtue of being untempted, by the manifold partial developments of beauty and good on every side, into leaving them the ultimates he found them,—induced by the facility of the gratification of his own sense of those qualities, or by the pleasure of acquiescence in the shortcomings of his predecessors in art, and the pain of disturbing their conventionalisms,—the whole poet's virtue, I repeat, of looking higher than any manifestation yet made of both beauty and good,in order to suggest from the utmost realization of the one a corresponding capability in the other, and out of the calm, purity, and energy of nature to reconstitute and store up, for the forthcoming stage of man's being, a gift in repayment of that former gift in which man's own thought and passion had been lavished by the poet on the else-incompleted magnificence of the sunrise, the else-uninterpreted mystery of the lake,—so drawing out, lifting up, and assimilating this ideal of a future man, thus descried as possible, to the present reality of the poet's soul already arrived at the higher state of development, and still aspirant to elevate and extend itself in conformity with its still-improving perceptions of, no longer the eventual Human, but the actual Divine. In conjunction with which noble and rare powers came the subordinate power of delivering these attained results to the world in an embodiment of verse more closely answering to and indicative of the process of the informing spirit, (failing, as it occasionally does, in art, only to succeed in highest art),—with a diction more adequate to the task in its natural and acquired richness, its material color and spiritual transparency,—the whole being moved by and suffused with a music at once of the soul and the sense, expressive both of an external might of sincere passion and an internal fitness and consonancy,—than can be attributed to any other writer whose record is among us. Such was the spheric poetical faculty of Shelley, as its own self-sacrificing central light, radiating equally through immaturity and accomplishment, through many fragments and occasional completion, reveals it to a competent judgment.
But the acceptance of this truth by the public has been retarded by certain objections which cast us back on the evidence of biography, even with Shelley's poetry in our hands. Except for the particular character of these objections, indeed, the non-appreciation of his contemporaries would simply class, now that it is over, with a series of experiences which have necessarily happened, and needlessly been wondered at, ever since the world began, and concerning which any present anger may well be moderated, no less in justice to our forerunners than in policy to ourselves. For the misapprehensiveness of his age is exactly what a poet is sent to remedy; and the interval between his operation and the generally perceptible effect of it is no greater, less indeed, than in many other departments of great human effort. The "E pur si muove" of the astronomer was as bitter a word as any uttered before or since by a poet over his rejected living work, in that depth of conviction which is so like despair.
But in this respect was the experience of Shelley peculiarly unfortunate,—that the disbelief in him as a man even preceded the disbelief in him as a writer; the misconstruction of his moral nature preparing the way for the misappreciation of his intellectual labors. There existed from the beginning—simultaneous with, indeed anterior to, his earliest noticeable works, and not brought forward to counteract any impression they had succeeded in making—certain charges against his private character and life, which, if substantiated to their whole breadth, would materially disturb, I do not attempt to deny, our reception and enjoyment of his works, however wonderful the artistic qualities of these. For we are not sufficiently supplied with instances of genius of his order to be able to pronounce certainly how many of its constituent parts have been tasked and strained to the production of a given lie, and how high and pure a mood of the creative mind may be dramatically simulated as the poet's habitual and exclusive one. The doubts, therefore, arising from such a question, required to be set at rest, as they were effectually, by those early authentic notices of Shelley's career and the corroborative accompaniment of his letters, in which not only the main tenor and principal result of his life, but the purity and beauty of many of the processes which had conduced to them, were made apparent enough for the general reader's purpose,—whoever lightly condemned Shelley first, on the evidence of reviews and gossip, as lightly acquitting him now, on that of memoirs and correspondence. Still, it is advisable to lose no opportunity of strengthening and completing the chain of biographical testimony; much more, of course, for the sake of the poet's original lovers, whose volunteered sacrifice of particular principle in favor of absorbing sympathy we might desire to dispense with, than for the sake of his foolish haters, who have long since diverted upon other objects their obtuseness or malignancy. A full life of Shelley should be written at once, while the materials for it continue in reach; not to minister to the curiosity of the public, but to obliterate the last stain of that false life which was forced on the public's attention before it had any curiosity on the matter,—a biography composed in harmony with the present general disposition to have faith in him, yet not shrinking from a candid statement of all ambiguous passages, through a reasonable confidence that the most doubtful of them will be found consistent with a belief in the eventual perfection of his character, according to the poor limits of our humanity. Nor will men persist in confounding, any more than God confounds, with genuine infidelity and atheism of the heart those passionate, impatient struggles of a boy towards distant truth and love, made in the dark, and ended by one sweep of the natural seas before the full moral sunrise could shine out on him. Crude convictions of boyhood, conveyed in imperfect and inapt forms of speech,—for such things all boys have been pardoned. There are growing-pains, accompanied by temporary distortion, of the soul also. And it would be hard indeed upon this young Titan of genius, murmuring in divine music his human ignorances through his very thirst for knowledge, and his rebellion in mere aspiration to law, if the melody itself substantiated the error, and the tragic cutting short of life perpetuatedinto sins such faults as, under happier circumstances, would have been left behind by the consent of the most arrogant moralist, forgotten on the lowest steps of youth.
The responsibility of presenting to the public a biography of Shelley does not, however, lie with me: I have only to make it a little easier by arranging these few supplementary letters, with a recognition of the value of the whole collection. This value I take to consist in a most truthful conformity of the Correspondence, in its limited degree, with the moral and intellectual character of the writer as displayed in the highest manifestations of his genius. Letters and poems are obviously an act of the same mind, produced by the same law, only differing in the application to the individual or collective understanding. Letters and poems may be used indifferently as the basement of our opinion upon the writer's character; the finished expression of a sentiment in the poems giving light and significance to the rudiments of the same in the letters, and these again, in their incipiency and unripeness, authenticating the exalted mood and reattaching it to the personality of the writer. The musician speaks on the note he sings with; there is no change in the scale as he diminishes the volume into familiar intercourse. There is nothing of that jarring between the man and the author, which has been found so amusing or so melancholy; no dropping of the tragic mask as the crowd melts away; no mean discovery of the real motives of a life's achievement, often in other lives laid bare as pitifully as when, at the close of a holiday, we catch sight of the internal lead-pipes and wood-valves to which, and not to the ostensible conch and dominant Triton of the fountain, we have owed our admired water-work. No breaking out, in household privacy, of hatred, anger, and scorn, incongruous with the higher mood, and suppressed artistically in the book; no brutal return to self-delighting, when the audience of philanthropic schemes is out of hearing; no indecent stripping off the grander feeling and rule of life as too costly and cumbrous for every-day wear. Whatever Shelley was, he was with an admirable sincerity. It was not always truth that he thought and spoke; but in the purity of truth he spoke and thought always. Everywhere is apparent his belief in the existence of Good, to which Evil is an accident; his faithful holding by what he assumed to be the former going everywhere in company with the tenderest pity for those acting or suffering on the opposite hypothesis. For he was tender, though tenderness is not always the characteristic of very sincere natures; he was eminently both tender and sincere. And not only do the same affection and yearning after the well-being of his kind appear in the letters as in the poems, but they express themselves by the same theories and plans, however crude and unsound. There is no reservation of a subtler, less costly, more serviceable remedy for his own ill than he has proposed for the general one; nor does he ever contemplate an object on his own account from a less elevation than he uses in exhibiting it to the world. How shall we help believing Shelley to have been, in his ultimate attainment, the splendid spirit of his own best poetry, when we find even his carnal speech to agree faithfully, at faintest as at strongest, with the tone and rhythm of his most oracular utterances?
For the rest, these new letters are not offered as presenting any new feature of the poet's character. Regarded in themselves, and as the substantive productions of a man, their importance would be slight. But they possess interest beyond their limits, in confirming the evidence just dwelt on, of the poetical mood of Shelley being only the intensification of his habitual mood; the same tongue only speaking, for want of the special excitement to sing. The very first letter, as one instance for all, strikes the key-note of the predominating sentiment of Shelley throughout his whole life—his sympathy with the oppressed. And when we see him at so early an age, casting out, under the influence of such a sympathy, letters and pamphlets on every side, we accept it as the simple exemplification of the sincerity, with which, at the close of his life, he spoke of himself, as—