And burst o'er a city of stars; but she,
As he dash'd on the back of the Zodiac,
And quiver'd and glow'd down arc and node,
And split sparkling into infinity,
Thought that some angel, in his reveries
Thinking of earth, as he pensively
Lean'd over the star-crated balcony
In his palace among the Pleiades,
And grieved for the sorrow he saw in the land,
Had dropped a white lily from his loose hand.
There is danger of indulging with too wide a poetical license in "conceits" of this sort, which verge upon the "high fantastical." "The Artist" is, perhaps, the best example of our poet's meditative habit. It owes something to Emerson in its cast of thought, but it has a "native hue of resolution," and character and pith of its own. It teaches the inexhaustible teachings of Nature, animate and inanimate—haply hid in bramble blossoms, or shut within the daisy-lid; it shows how the Creator's glory lies within reach, so that the mosses we trample on, and "the pebbles on the wet sea-beach, have solemn meanings strange and sweet."
The peasant at his cottage door
May teach thee more than Plato knew:
See that thou scorn him not: adore
God in him, and thy nature too.
We are bid seek more in the woodbine's breath, and the vine's woolly tendrils, than in Cato's suicide, or Cicero's words to Catiline—to recognise in the wild rose our next of blood, and our sisterhood in the kingcups. "Be strong," the would-be Artist is exhorted, "and trust high instincts more than all the creeds:" this is Emerson all over—
Not all the wisdom of the schools
Is wise for thee. Hast thou to speak?
No man hath spoken for thee. Rules
Are well: but never fear to break
The scaffolding of other souls:
It was not meant for thee to mount;
Though it may serve thee. Separate wholes
Make up the sum of God's account.
And so is this:
Burn catalogues. Write thine own books.
What need to pore o'er Greece and Rome?
When whoso thro' his own life looks
Shall find that he is fully come
Through Greece and Rome, and Middle-Age:
Hath been by turns, ere yet full-grown,
Soldier, and Senator, and Sage,
And worn the tunic and the gown.
An excerpt or two, "most musical most melancholy," from "A Soul's Loss," will tell their own tale:
Mourn I may, that from her features
All the angel light is gone.
But I chide not. Human creatures
Are not angels. She was none.
Women have so many natures!
I think she loved me well with one.
