But what’s the matter?—pain or ravishment?
Poet.
If such your service, you must be content
With other servants who will take your pay!
Shall then the bard his noblest right betray?
The right of man, which Nature’s gift imparts,
For brainless plaudits basely jest away?
What gives him power to move all hearts,
Each stubborn element to sway,
What but the harmony, his being’s inmost tone,
That charms all feelings back into his own?
Where listless Nature, her eternal thread,
The unwilling spindle twists around,
And hostile shocks of things that will not wed
With jarring dissonance resound,
Who guides with living pulse the rhythmic flow
Of powers that make sweet music as they go?
Who consecrates each separate limb and soul
To beat in glorious concert with the whole?
Who makes the surgy-swelling billow
Heave with the wildly heaving breast,
And on the evening’s rosy pillow,
Invites the brooding heart to rest?
Who scatters spring’s most lovely blooms upon
The path of the belovèd one?
Who plaits the leaves that unregarded grow
Into a crown to deck the honored brow?
Who charms the gods? who makes Olympos yield?
The power of man in poet’s art revealed.
Merryfellow.
Then learn such subtle powers to wield,
And on the poet’s business enter
As one does on a love-adventure.
They meet by chance, are pleased, and stay
On being pressed, just for a day;
Then hours to hours are sweetly linked in chain,
Till net-caught by degrees, they find retreat is vain.
At first the sky is bright, then darkly lowers;
To-day, fine thrilling rapture wings the hours,
To-morrow, doubts and anguish have their chance,
