The poet rose up on his feet:
He stood before an altar set
For sacrament, with vessels meet,
And mystic altar-lights which shine
As if their flames were crystalline
Carved flames that would not shrink or pine.
The altar filled the central place
Of a great church, and toward its face
Long aisles did shoot and interlace.
And from it a continuous mist
Of incense (round the edges kissed
By a pure light of amethyst)
Wound upward slowly and throbbingly,
Cloud within cloud, right silverly,
Cloud above cloud, victoriously,
Broke full against the arched roof,
And, thence refracting, eddied off,
And floated through the marble woof
Of many a fine-wrought architrave,-
Then, poising the white masses brave,
Swept solemnly down aisle and nave.
And now in dark, and now in light,
The countless columns, glimmering white,
Seemed leading out to Infinite.
Plunged half-way up the shaft they showed,
In the pale shifting incense-cloud
Which flowed them by, and overflowed,
Till mist and marble seemed to blend,
And the whole temple, at the end,
With its own incense to distend;
The arches, like a giant's bow,
To bend and slacken,-and below,
The niched saints to come and go.
Alone, amid the shifting scene,
That central altar stood serene
In its clear stedfast taper-sheen.
Then first, the poet was aware
Of a chief angel standing there
Before that altar, in the glare.
His eyes were dreadful, for you saw
That they saw God—his lips and jaw
Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's Law
They could enunciate, and refrain
From vibratory after-pain;
And his brow's height was sovereign
On the vast background of his wings
Arose his image; and he flings,
From each plumed arc, pale glitterings
And fiery flakes (as beateth more,
Or less, the angel-heart) before,
And round him, upon roof and floor,
Edging with fire the shifting fumes:
While at his side, 'twixt lights and glooms,
The phantasm of an organ booms.
Extending from which instrument
And angel, right and left-way bent,
The poet's sight grew sentient
Of a strange company around
And toward the altar,-pale and crowned,
With sovran eyes of depth profound.
Deathful their faces were; and yet
The power of life was in them set-
Never forgot, nor to forget.
Sublime significance of mouth,
Dilated nostril full of youth,
And forehead royal with the truth.
These faces were not multiplied
Beyond your count, but side by side
Did front the altar, glorified:
Still as a vision, yet exprest
Full as an action-look and geste
Of buried saint, in risen rest.
The poet knew them. Faint and dim
His spirits seemed to sink in him,
Then, like a dolphin, change and swim
The current-These were poets true,
Who died for Beauty, as martyrs do
For Truth-the ends being scarcely two.
God's prophets of the Beautiful
These poets were—of iron rule,
The rugged cilix, serge of wool.
Here, Homer, with the broad suspense
Of thunderous brows, and lips intense
Of garrulous god-innocence.
There, Shakespeare! on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the World. Oh, eyes sublime—
With tears and laughters for all time!
Here, Æschylus,-the women swooned
To see so awful, when he frowned
As the gods did,-he standeth crowned.
Euripides, with close and mild
Scholastic lips,-that could be wild,
And laugh or sob out like a child,
Right in the classes. Sophocles,
With that king's look which, down the trees,
Followed the dark effigies
Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold,
Cared most for Gods and bulls. And bold
Electric Pindar, quick as fear,
With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear,
Slant startled eyes that seem to hear
The chariot rounding the last goal,
To hurtle past it in his soul.
And Sappho, crowned with aureole
Of ebon curls on calmed brows-
O poet-woman! none foregoes
The leap, attaining the repose!
Theocritus, with glittering locks
Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks
He watched the visionary flocks.
And Aristophanes, who took
The world with mirth, and laughter-struck
The hollow caves of Thought, and woke
The infinite echoes hid in each.
And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech
Did help the shade of bay to reach
And knit around his forehead high ;-
For his gods wore less majesty
Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly.
Lucretius-nobler than his mood:
Who dropped his plummet down the broad
Deep universe, and said "No God,"
Finding no bottom : he denied
Divinely the divine, and died
Chief poet on the Tiber-side,
By grace of God! his face is stern,
As one compelled, in spite of scorn,
To teach a truth he could not learn.
And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed:
Once counted greater than the rest,
When mountain-winds blew out his vest.
And Spenser drooped his dreaming head (With languid sleep-smile, you had said, From his own verse engendered)
On Ariosto's, till they ran
Their locks in one.-The Italian
Shot nimbler heat of bolder man
From his fine lids. And Dante stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk poured out in turn.
Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed
Boiardo,-who with laughters filled
The pauses of the jostled shield.
And Berni, with a hand stretched out
To sleek that storm. And not without
The wreath he died in, and the doubt
He died by, Tasso; bard and lover,
Whose visions were too thin to cover
The face of a false woman over.
And soft Racine,-and grave Corneille—
The orator of rhymes, whose wail
Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,
Who from his brain-lit heart hath thrown
A thousand thoughts beneath the sun,
Each perfumed with the name of One.
And Camoens, with that look he had,
Compelling India's Genius sad
From the wave through the Lusiad,
With murmurs of a purple ocean
Indrawn in vibrative emotion
In his wild eyes fantastic shone
Between the bright curls blown upon
By airs celestial,-Calderon.
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