Part 15

Friend and scholar, who, in charity, hast walked with me thus far, We have wandered in a wilderness of sweets, tracking beauty's footsteps: And ever as we rambled on among the tangled thicket, Many a startled thought hath tempted further roaming: Passion, sympathetic influence, might of imaginary haloes,-- Many the like would lure aside, to hunt their wayward themes. And, look you!--from his ferny bed in yonder hazel coppice, A dappled hart hath flung aside the boughs and broke away; He is fleet and capricious as the zephyr, and with exulting bounds Hieth down a turfy lane between the sounding woods; His neck is garlanded with flowers, his antlers hung with chaplets, And rainbow-coloured ribbons stream adown his mottled flanks: Should we follow?--foolish hunters, thus to chase afoot,-- Who can track the airy speed and doubling wiles of Taste?

For the estimates of human beauty, dependent upon time and clime, Manifold and changeable, are multiplied the more by strange gregarious fashion: And notable ensamples in the great turn to epidemics in the lower, So that a nation's taste shall vary with its rulers. Stern Egypt, humbled to the Greek, fancied softer idols; Greece, the Roman province, nigh forgat her classic sculpture; Rome, crushed beneath the Goth, loved his barbarian habits; And Alaric, with his ruffian horde, is tamed by silken Rome. Columbia's flattened head, and China's crumpled feet,-- The civilized tapering waist,--and the pendulous ears of the savage,-- The swollen throat among the mountains, and an ebon skin beneath the tropics,-- These shall all be reckoned beauty: and for weighty cause. First, for the latter: Providence in mercy tempereth taste by circumstance, So that Nature's must shall hit her creature's liking; Second, for the middle: though the foolishness of vanity seek to mar proportion, Still, defects in those we love shall soon be counted praise; Third, for the first: a chief, and a princess, maimed or distorted from the cradle Shall coax the flattery of slaves to imitate the great in their deformity: Hence groweth habit: and habits make a taste, And so shall servile zeal deface the types of beauty. Whiles Alexander conquered, crookedness was comely: And followers learn to praise the scars upon their leader's brow. Youth hath sought to flatter age by mimicking grey hairs; Age plastereth her wrinkles, and is painted in the ruddiness of Youth. Fashion, the parasite of Rank, apeth faults and failings, Until the general Taste depraved hath warped its sense of beauty.

Each man hath a measure for himself, yet all shall coincide in much; A perfect form of human grace would captivate the world: Be it manhood's lustre, or the loveliness of woman, all would own its beauty, The Caffre and Circassian, Russians and Hindoos, the Briton, the Turk and Japanese. Not all alike, nor all at once, but each in proportion to intelligence, His purer state in morals, and a lesser grade in guilt: For the high standard of the beautiful is fixed in Reason's forum, And sins, and customs, and caprice, have failed to break it down: And reason's standard for the creature pointeth three perfections, Frame, knowledge, and the feeling heart, well and kindly mingled; A fair dwelling, furnished wisely, with a gentle tenant in it,-- This is the glory of humanity: thou hast seen it seldom.

There is a beauty for the body; the superficial polish of a statue, The symmetry of form and feature delicately carved and painted. How bright in early bloom the Georgian sitteth at her lattice, How softened off in graceful curves her young and gentle shape: Those dark eyes, lit by curiosity, flash beneath the lashes, And still her velvet cheek is dimpled with a smile. Dost thou count her beautiful?--even as a mere fair figure, A plastic image, little more,--the outer garb of woman: Yea,--and thus far it is well; but Reason's hopes are higher,-- Can he sate his soul on a scantling third of beauty?

Yet is this the pleasing trickery, that cheateth half the world, Nature's wise deceit to make up waste in life; And few be they that rest uncaught, for many a twig is limed; Where is the wise among a million, that took not form for beauty? But watch it well; for vanity and sin, malice, hate, suspicion, Louring as clouds upon the countenance, will disenchant its charms. The needful complexity of beauty claimeth mind and soul, Though many coins of foul alloy pass current for the true: And albeit fairness in the creature shall often co-exist with excellence, Yet hath many an angel shape been tenanted by fiends. A man, spiritually keen, shall detect in surface beauty Those marring specks of evil which the sensual cannot see; Therefore is he proof against a face, unlovely to his likings, And common minds shall scorn the taste, that shrunk from sin's distortion.

There is a beauty for the reason; grandly independent of externals, It looketh from the windows of the house, shining in the man triumphant. I have seen the broad blank face of some misshapen dwarf Lit on a sudden as with glory, the brilliant light of mind: Who then imagined him deformed? intelligence is blazing on his forehead, There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek glittereth with beauty: And I have known some Nireus of the camp, a varnished paragon of chamberers, Fine, elegant, and shapely, moulded as the master-piece of Phidias,-- Such an one, with intellects abased, have I noted crouching to the dwarf, Whilst his lovers scorn the fool, whose beauty hath departed!

And there is a beauty for the spirit; mind in its perfect flowering, Fragrant, expanded into soul, full of love and blessed. Go to some squalid couch, some famishing death-bed of the poor; He is shrunken, cadaverous, diseased;--there is here no beauty of the body: Never hath he fed on knowledge, nor drank at the streams of science, He is of the common herd, illiterate;--there is here no beauty of the reason: But lo! his filming eye is bright with love from heaven, In every look it beameth praise, as worshipping with seraphs; What honeycomb is hived upon his lips, eloquent of gratitude and prayer,-- What triumph shrined serene upon that clammy brow, What glory flickering transparent under those thin cheeks,-- What beauty in his face!--Is it not the face of an angel?

Now, of these three, infinitely mingled and combined, Consisteth human beauty, in all the marvels of its mightiness: And forth from human beauty springeth the intensity of Love; Feeling, thought, desire, the three deep fountains of affection. Son of Adam, or daughter of Eve, art thou trapped by nature, And is thy young eye dazzled with the pleasant form of beauty? This is but a lower love; still it hath its honour; What God hath made and meant to charm, let not man despise. Nevertheless, as reason's child, look thou wisely farther, For age, disease, and care, and sin, shall tarnish all the surface: Reach a loftier love: be lured by the comeliness of mind,-- Gentle, kind, and calm, or lustrous in the livery of knowledge. And more, there is a higher grade; force the mind to its perfection-- Win those golden trophies of consummate love: Add unto riches of the reason, and a beauty moulded to thy liking, The precious things of nobler grace that well adorn a soul; Thus, be thou owner of a treasure, great in earth and heaven, Beauty, wisdom, goodness, in a creature like its God.

So then, draw we to an end; with feeble step and faltering, I follow beauty through the universe, and find her home Ubiquity: In all that God hath made, in all that man hath marred, Lingereth beauty, or its wreck, a broken mould and castings. And now, having wandered long time, freely and with desultory feet, To gather in the garden of the world a few fair sample flowers, With patient scrutinizing care let us cull the conclusion of their essence, And answer to the riddle of Zorobabel, Whence the might of beauty?

Ugliness is native unto nothing, but an attribute of concrete evil; In everything created, at its worst, lurk the dregs of loveliness: We be fallen into utter depths, yet once we stood sublime, For man was made in perfect praise, his Maker's comely image: And so his new-born ill is spiced with older good, He carrieth with him, yea to crime, the withered limbs of beauty. Passions may be crooked generosities; the robber stealeth for his children; Murder was avenger of the innocent, or wiped out shame with blood. Many virtues, weighted by excess, sink among the vices; Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues. For, albeit sin is hate, a foul and bitter turpitude, As hurling back against the Giver all His gifts with insult, Still when concrete in the sinner, it will seem to partake of his attractions, And in seductive masquerade shall cloak its leprous skin; His broken lights of beauty shall illumine its utter black, And those refracted rays glitter on the hunch of its deformity.

Verily the fancy may be false, yet hath it met me in my musings, (As expounding the pleasantness of pleasure, but no ways extenuating licence,) That even those yearnings after beauty, in wayward wanton youth, When, guileless of ulterior end, it craveth but to look upon the lovely, Seem like struggles of the soul, dimly remembering pre-existence, And feeling in its blindness for a long-lost god, to satisfy its longing; As if the sucking babe, tenderly mindful of his mother, Should pull a dragon's dugs, and drain the teats of poison. Our primal source was beauty, and we pant for it ever and again; But sin hath stopped the way with thorns; we turn aside, wander, and are lost.

God, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty, And every child of reason drew his essence from that stem. Therefore, it is of intuition, an innate hankering for home, A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed, That we, unconscious of a cause, should bask these darkened souls In some poor relics of the light that blazed in primal beauty, And, even like as exiles of idolatry, should quaff from the cisterns of creation Stagnant draughts, for those fresh springs that rise in the Creator.

Only, being burdened with the body, spiritual appetite is warped, And sensual man, with taste corrupted, drinketh of pollutions: Impulse is left, but indiscriminate; his hunger feasteth upon carrion; His natural love of beauty doateth over beauty in decay. He still thirsteth for the beautiful; but his delicate ideal hath grown gross, And the very sense of thirst hath been fevered from affection into passion. He remembereth the blessedness of light, but it is with an old man's memory, A blind old man from infancy, that once hath seen the sun, Whom long experience of night hath darkened in his cradle recollections, Until his brightest thought of noon is but a shade of black.

This then is thy charm, O beauty all pervading; And this thy wondrous strength, O beauty, conqueror of all: The outline of our shadowy best, the pure and comely creature, That winneth on the conscience with a saddening admiration: And some untutored thirst for God, the root of every pleasure, Native to creatures, yea in ruin, and dating from the birthday of the soul. For God sealeth up the sum, confirmed exemplar of proportions, Rich in love, full of wisdom, and perfect in the plenitude of Beauty.

OF FAME.

Blow the trumpet, spread the wing, fling thy scroll upon the sky, Rouse the slumbering world, O Fame, and fill the sphere with echo! --Beneath thy blast they wake, and murmurs come hoarsely on the wind, And flashing eyes and bristling hands proclaim they hear thy message: Rolling and surging as a sea, that upturned flood of faces Hasteneth with its million tongues to spread the wondrous tale; The hum of added voices groweth to the roaring of a cataract, And rapidly from wave to wave is tossed that exaggerated story, Until those stunning clamours, gradually diluted in the distance, Sink ashamed, and shrink afraid of noise, and die away. Then brooding Silence, forth from his hollow caverns, Cloaked and cowled, and gliding along, a cold and stealthy shadow, Once more is mingled with the multitude, whispering as he walketh, And hushing all their eager ears, to hear some newer Fame. So all is still again; but nothing of the past hath been forgotten; A stirring recollection of the trumpet ringeth in the hearts of men: And each one, either envious or admiring, hath wished the chance were his To fill as thus the startled world with fame, or fear, or wonder. This lit thy torch of sacrilege, Ephesian Eratostratus; This dug thy living grave, Pythagoras, the traveller from Hadës; For this, dived Empedocles into Etna's fiery whirlpool; For this, conquerors, regicides, and rebels, have dared their perilous crimes. In all men, from the monarch to the menial, lurketh lust of fame: The savage and the sage alike regard their labours proudly: Yea, in death, the glazing eye is illumined by the hope of reputation, And the stricken warrior is glad, that his wounds are salved with glory.

For fame is a sweet self-homage, an offering grateful to the idol, A spiritual nectar for the spiritual thirst, a mental food for mind, A pregnant evidence to all of an after immaterial existence, A proof that soul is scatheless, when its dwelling is dissolved. And the manifold pleasures of fame are sought by the guilty and the good: Pleasures, various in kind, and spiced to every palate: The thoughtful loveth fame as an earnest of better immortality, The industrious and deserving, as a symbol of just appreciation, The selfish, as a promise of advancement, at least to a man's own kin, And common minds, as a flattering fact that men have been told of their existence.

There is a blameless love of fame, springing from desire of justice, When a man hath featly won and fairly claimed his honours: And then fame cometh as encouragement to the inward consciousness of merit, Gladdening by the kindliness and thanks, wherewithal his labours are rewarded. But there is a sordid imitation, a feverish thirst for notoriety, Waiting upon vanity and sloth, and utterly regardless of deserving: And then fame cometh as a curse; the fire-damp is gathered in the mine: The soul is swelled with poisonous air, and a spark of temptation shall explode it.

Idle causes, noised awhile, shall yield most active consequents, And therefore it were ill upon occasion to scorn the voice of rumour. Ye have seen the chemist in his art mingle invisible gases; And lo, the product is a substance, a heavy dark precipitate: Even so fame, hurtling on the quiet with many meeting tongues, Can out of nothing bring forth fruits, and blossom on a nourishment of air. For many have earned honour, and thereby rank and riches, From false and fleeting tales, some casual mere mistake; And many have been wrecked upon disgrace, and have struggled with poverty and scorn, From envious hints and ill reports, the slanders cast on innocence. Whom may not scandal hit? those shafts are shot at a venture: Who standeth not in danger of suspicion? that net hath caught the noblest. Cæsar's wife was spotless, but a martyr to false fame; And Rumour, in temporary things, is gigantic as a ruin or a remedy: Many poor and many rich have testified its popular omnipotence, And many a panic-stricken army hath perished with the host of the Assyrians.

Nevertheless, if opportunity be nought, let a man bide his time; So the matter be not merchandise nor conquest, fear thou less for character. If a liar accuseth thee of evil, be not swift to answer; Yea, rather give him license for awhile; it shall help thine honour afterward: Never yet was calumny engendered, but good men speedily discerned it, And innocence hath burst from its injustice, as the green world rolling out of Chaos. What, though still the wicked scoff,--this also turneth to his praise; Did ye never hear that censure of the bad is buttress to a good man's glory? What, if the ignorant still hold out, obstinate in unkind judgment,-- Ignorance and calumny are paired; we affirm by two negations: Let them stand round about, pushing at the column in a circle, For all their toil and wasted strength, the foolish do but prop it. And note thou this; in the secret of their hearts, they feel the taunt is false, And cannot help but reverence the courage, that walketh amid calumnies unanswering: He standeth as a gallant chief, unheeding shot or shell; He trusteth in God his Judge: neither arrows nor the pestilence shall harm him.

A high heart is a sacrifice to Heaven: should it stoop among the creepers in the dust, To tell them that what God approved, is worthy of their praise? Never shall it heed the thought; but flaming on in triumph to the skies, And quite forgetting fame, shall find it added as a trophy. A great mind is an altar on a hill: should the priest descend from his altitude, To canvass offerings and worship from dwellers on the plain? Rather, with majestic perseverance will he minister in solitary grandeur, Confident the time will come, when pilgrims shall be flocking to the shrine. For fame is the birthright of genius; and he recketh not how long it be delayed; The heir need not hasten to his heritage, when he knoweth that his tenure is eternal. The careless poet of Avon, was he troubled for his fame, Or the deep-mouthed chronicler of Paradise, heeded he the suffrage of his equals? Mæonides took no thought, committing all his honours to the future, And Flaccus, standing on his watch-tower, spied the praise of ages.

Smoking flax will breed a flame, and the flame may illuminate a world; Where is he who scorned that smoke as foul and murky vapour? The village stream swelled to a river, and the river was a kingdom's wealth, Where is he who boasted he could step across that stream? Such are the beginnings of the famous: little in the judgment of their peers, The juster verdict of posterity shall fix them in the orbits of the Great. Therefore dull Zoilus, clamouring ascendant of the hour, Will soon be fain to hide his hate, and bury up his bitterness for shame: Therefore mocking Momus, offended at the footsteps of Beauty, Shall win the prize of his presumption, and be hooted from his throne among the stars. For, as the shadow of a mountain lengtheneth before the setting sun, Until that screening Alp have darkened all the canton,-- So, Fame groweth to its great ones; their images loom longer in departing; But the shadow of mind is light, and earth is filled with its glory.

And thou, student of the truth, commended to the praise of God, Wouldst thou find applause with men?--seek it not, nor shun it. Ancient fame is roofed in cedar, and her walls are marble; Modern fame lodgeth in a hut, a slight and temporary dwelling: Lay not up the treasures of thy soul within so damp a chamber, For the moth of detraction shall fret thy robe, and drop its eggs upon thy motive; Or the rust of disheartening reserve shall spoil the lustre of thy gold, Until its burnished beauty shall be dim as tarnished brass; Or thieves, breaking through to steal, shall claim thy jewelled thoughts, And turn to charge the theft on thee, a pilferer from them!

There is a magnanimity in recklessness of fame, so fame be well deserving, That rusheth on in fearless might, the conscious sense of merit: And there is a littleness in jealousy of fame, looking as aware of weakness, That creepeth cautiously along, afraid that its title will be challenged. The wild boar, full of beechmast, flingeth him down among the brambles; Secure in bristly strength, without a watch, he sleepeth: But the hare, afraid to feed, croucheth in its own soft form; Wakefully with timid eyes, and quivering ears, he listeneth. Even so, a giant's might is bound up in the soul of Genius, His neck is strong with confidence, and he goeth tusked with power: Sturdily he roameth in the forest, or sunneth him in fen and field, And scareth from his marshy lair a host of fearful foes. But there is a mimic Talent, whose safety lieth in its quickness, A timorous thing of doubling guile, that scarce can face a friend: This one is captious of reproof, provident to snatch occasion, Greedy of applause, and vexed to lose one tittle of the glory. He is a poor warder of his fame, who is ever on the watch to keep it spotless; Such care argueth debility, a garrison relying on its sentinel. Passive strength shall scorn excuses, patiently waiting a re-action, He wotteth well that truth is great, and must prevail at last; But fretful weakness hasteth to explain, anxiously dreading prejudice, And ignorant that perishable falsehood dieth as a branch cut off.

Purity of motive and nobility of mind shall rarely condescend To prove its rights, and prate of wrongs, or evidence its worth to others. And it shall be small care to the high and happy conscience What jealous friends, or envious foes, or common fools may judge. Should the lion turn and rend every snarling jackal, Or an eagle be stopt in his career to punish the petulance of sparrows? Should the palm-tree bend his crown to chide the briar at his feet, Nor kindly help its climbing, if it hope, and be ambitious? Should the nightingale account it worth her pains to vindicate her music, Before some sorry finches, that affect to judge of song? No: many an injustice, many a sneer, and slur, Is passed aside with noble scorn by lovers of true fame: For well they wot that glory shall be tinctured good or evil, By the character of those who give it, as wine is flavoured by the wineskin: So that worthy fame floweth only from a worthy fountain, But from an ill-conditioned troop the best report is worthless. And if the sensibility of genius count his injuries in secret, Wisely will he hide the pains a hardened herd would mock: For the great mind well may be sad to note such littleness in brethren, The while he is comforted and happy in the firmest assurance of desert.