Festus · Scene 20 (2/2) (5/5)

| Helen | Now I know You two will talk of nothing else all night; So I will to my music. Sweet! I come. Art thou not glad to see me? What a time Since I have touched thine eloquent white fingers. Hast thou forgot me? Mind, now? Know’st thou not My greeting? Ah! I love thee. Talk away! Never mind me; I shall not you. | | Student | Agreed! | | Helen | By the sweet muse of music, I could swear I do believe it smiles upon me; see it Full of unuttered music, like a bird; Rich in invisible treasures, like a bud Of unborn sweets, and thick about the heart With ripe and rosy beauty⁠—full to trembling. I love it like a sister. Hark!⁠—its tones; They melt the soul within one like a sword, Albeit sheathed, by lightning. Talk to me, Lovely one! Answer me, thou beauty! | | Student | Hear her! | | Festus | Experience and imagination are Mother and sire of song⁠—the harp and hand. The bard’s aim is to give us thoughts: his art Lieth in giving them as bright as may be. And even when their looks are earthy, still If opened, like geoids, they may be found Full of all sparkling sparry loveliness. They should be wrought, not cast; like tempered steel, Burned and cooled, burned again, and cooled again. A thought is like a ray of light⁠—complex In nature, simple only in effect. Words are the motes of thought, and nothing more. Words are like sea-shells on the shore; they show Where the mind ends, and not how far it has been. Let every thought, too, soldier-like, be stripped, And roughly looked over. The dress of words, Like to the Roman girl’s enticing garb, Should let the play of limb be seen through it, And the round rising form. A mist of words, Like halos round the moon, though they enlarge The seeming size of thoughts, make the light less Doubly. It is the thought writ down we want, Not its effect⁠—not likenesses of likenesses. And such descriptions are not, more than gloves Instead of hands to shake, enough for us. | | Student | But is the power⁠—is poesie inborn, Or is it to be gained by art or toil? | | Festus | It is underived, except from God; but where Strongest, asks most of human care and aid. Great bards toil much and most; but most at first, Ere they can learn to concentrate the soul For hours upon a thought to carry it. | | Student | Why I have sat for hours and never moved, Saving my hands, clock-like, in writing round Day after day of thought, and lapse of life. | | Festus | Many make books, few poems, which may do Well for their gains, but they do nought for truth, Nor man, true bard’s main aim. Perish the books, But the creations live. Some steal a thought, And clip it round the edge, and challenge him Whose ’twas to swear to it. To serve things thus Is as foul witches to cut up old moons Into new stars. Some never rise above A pretty fault, like faulty dahlias; And of whose best things it is kindly said, The thought is fair; but, to be perfect, wants A little heightening, like a pretty face With a low forehead. Do thou more than such, Or else do nothing. And in poetry, There is a poet-worship, one of other Which is idolatry, and not the true Love-service of the soul to God, which hath Alone of His inbreathing, and is rendered Unto Him, from the first, without man’s mean, By those whom He makes worthy of His worship; Who kneel at once to Him, and at no shrine, Save in the world’s wide ear, do they confess them Of faults which are all truths; and through which ear, As the world says them over to itself, He heareth and absolveth; for the bard Speaks but what all feel more or less within The heart’s heart, and the sin confessed is done Away with and for ever. | | Student | What of style? | | Festus | There is no style is good but nature’s style. And the great ancients’ writings, beside ours, Look like illuminated manuscripts Before plain press print; all had different minds, And followed only their own bents: for this Nor copied that, nor that the other; each Is finished in his writing, each is best For his own mind, and that it was upon; And all have lived, are living, and shall live; But these have died, are dying, and shall die; Yea, copyists shall die, spark out and out. Minds which combine and make alone can tell The bearings and the workings of all things Li and upon each other. All the parts Of nature meet and fit: wit, wisdom, worth, Goodness and greatness; to sublimity Beauty arises, like a planet world, Labouring slowly, seemingly, up Heaven; But with an infinite pace to some immortal eyes. And he who means to be a great bard, most Measure himself against pure mind, and fling His soul into a stream of thought, as will A swimmer hurl himself into the water. But never swimmer on the stream, nor bird On wind, feels half so strong, or swift, or glad, As bard borne high on his mind above himself; As though he should begin a lay like this, Where spiritual element is all; Thought chafing thought, as bough bough, till all burn, Like the star-written prophecies of Heaven. The shattered shadow of eternity Upon the troubled world, even as the sun Shows brokenly on wavy waters, time; All time is but a second to the dead. The smoke of the great burning of the world Had trailed across the skies for many an age, And was fast wearing into air away, When a saint stood before the throne, and cried⁠— Blessed be Thou, Lord God of all the worlds That have been, and that are, and are to be! For Thy destruction is like infinite With Thy creation, just and wise in both: Give me a world; and God said, Be it so: And the world was: and then go on to show How this new orb was made, and where it shone; Who ruled, abode, worshipped and loved therein; Their natures, duties, hopes: let it be pure, Wise, holy, beautiful; if not to be Without it, made so by constraint of God⁠— Kindly forced good: we have had enough of sin And folly here to wish for and love change. Let him show God as going thither mildly, Father-like, blessing all and cursing none; And that there never will be need for them That He shall come in glory new to Himself, With light to which the lightning shall be shadow, And the sun sadness; borne upon a car With wheels of burning worlds, within whose rims Whole hells burn, and beneath whose course the stars Dry up like dew-drops. But of this enough; I mean that he must weigh himself as he Will be weighed after by posterity; After us all are critics, to a man. Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can. The voice of great Or graceful thoughts is sweeter far than all Word-music; and great thoughts, like great deeds, need No trumpet. Never be in haste in writing. Let that thou utterest be of nature’s flow, Not art’s; a fountain’s, not a pump’s. But once Begun, work thou all things into thy work; And set thyself about it, as the sea About earth, lashing at it day and night. And leave the stamp of thine own soul in it As thorough as the fossil flower in clay. The theme shall start and struggle in thy breast, Like to a spirit in its tomb at rising, Bending the stones, and crying, Resurrection! | | Student | What theme remains? | | Festus | Thyself, thy race, thy love, The faithless and the full of faith in God; Thy race’s destiny, thy sacred love. Every believer is God’s miracle. Nothing will stand whose staple is not love; The love of God, or man, or lovely woman; The first is scarely touched, the next scarce felt, The third is desecrated; lift it up; Redeem it, hallow it, blend the three in one Great holy work. It shall be read in Heaven By all the saved of sinners of all time; Preachers shall point to it, and tell their wards It is a handful off eternal truth; Make ye a heartful of it: men shall will That it be buried with them in their hands: The young, the gay, the innocent, the brave, The fair, with soul and body both all love, Shall run to it with joy; and the old man, Still hearty in decline, whose happy life Hath blossomed downwards, like the purple bell-flower, Closing the book, shall utter lowlily⁠— Death, thou art infinite, it is life is little. Believe thou art inspired, and thou art. Look at the bard and others; never heed The petty hints of envy. If a fault It be in bard to deem himself inspired, ’Tis one which hath had many followers Before him. He is wont to make, unite, Believe; the world to part, and doubt, and narrow. That he believes, he utters. What the world Utters, it trusts not. But the time may come When all, along with those who seek to raise Men’s minds, and have enough of pain, without Suffering from envy, may be God-inspired To utter truth, and feel like love for men. Poets are henceforth the world’s teachers. Still The world is all in sects, which makes one loathe it. | | Student | The men of mind are mountains, and their heads Are sunned long ere the rest of earth. I would Be one such. | | Festus | It is well. Burn to be great. Pay not thy praise to lofty things alone. The plains are everlasting as the hills. The bard cannot have two pursuits: aught else Comes on the mind with the like shock as though Two worlds had gone to war and met in air. And now that thou hast heard thus much from one Not wont to seek, nor give, nor take advice, Remember, whatsoe’er thou art as man, Suffer the world, entreat it and forgive. They who forgive most shall be most forgiven. Dear Helen, I will tell the what I love Next to thee⁠—poesie. | | Helen | Can any thing Be even second to me in thy love? Doth it not distance all things? | | Festus | To say sooth, I once loved many things ere I met with thee, My one blue break of beauty in the clouds; Bending thyself to me as Heaven to earth. | | Helen | My love is like the moon, seems now to grow, And now to lessen; but it is only so Because thou canst not see it all at once It knows nor day, nor morrow, like the sun; Unchangeable as space it shall still be When yon bright suns, which are themselves but sands In the great glass of Time, shall be run out. | | Festus | Man is but half man without woman; and As do idolaters their heavenless gods, We deify the things which we adore. | | Helen | Our life is comely as a whole; nay, more, Like rich brown ringlets, with odd hairs all gold. We women have four seasons, like the year, Our spring is in our lightsome girlish days, When the heart laughs within us for sheer joy; Ere yet we know what love is or the ill Of being loved by those whom we love not. Summer is when we love and are beloved, And seems short; from its very splendour seems To pass the quickest; crowned with flowers it flies. Autumn, when some young thing with tiny hands, And rosy cheeks, and flossy tendrilled locks, Is wantoning about us day and night. And winter is when these we love have perished; For the heart ices then. And the next spring Is in another world, if one there be. Some miss one season, some another; this Shall have them early, and that late; and yet The year wear round with all as best it may. There is no rule for it; but in the main It is as I have said. | | Festus | My life with thee Is like a song, and the sweet music thou, Which doth accompany it. | | Student | Say, did thy friend Write aught beside the work thou tell’st of? | | Festus | Nothing. After that, like the burning peak, he fell Into himself, and was missing ever after. | | Student | If not a secret, pray who was he? | | Festus | I. |