White with the angel's coming gleam, And rippled with his fanning wings. Hear him unfold his plots and plans, You conjure from his glowing face His first swift word, talaria-shod, Out of the choir of planets blots Himself unshaken as the sky, His words, like whirlwinds, spin on high Systems and creeds pellmell together; "T is strange as to a deaf man's eye, While trees uprooted splinter by, The dumb turmoil of stormy weather; Less of iconoclast than shaper, His spirit, safe behind the reach Burns calmly as a glowworm's taper. So great in speech, but, ah! in act He might, unless my fancy errs, Our nipping climate hardly suits The ripening of ideal fruits; His theories vanquish us all summer, But winter makes him dumb and dumber; To see him 'mid life's needful things Is something painfully bewildering; He seems an angel with clipt wings Tied to a mortal wife and children, Like a clear fountain, his desire Exults and leaps toward the light, In every drop it says "Aspire!" Striving for more ideal height; And as the fountain, falling thence, Crawls baffled through the common gutter, So, from his speech's eminence, He shrinks into the present tense, Unkinged by foolish bread and butter. Yet smile not, worldling, for in deeds Not all of life that 's brave and wise is; He strews an ampler future's seeds, By soul the soul's gains must be wrought, The Ideal hath its higher duties. ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO. CAN this be thou who, lean and pale, With such immitigable eye Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale, And saw Francesca, with child's glee, And with proud hands control its fiery prance? With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow, And eye remote, that inly sees Fair Beatrice's spirit wandering now In some sea-lulled Hesperides, Thou movest through the jarring street, By her gift-blossom in thy hand, No trace is here of ruin's fiery sleet. Yet there is something round thy lips A something that would banish thee, And thine untamed pursuer be, From men and their unworthy fates, Though Florence had not shut her gates, And grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free. Ah! he who follows fearlessly The beckonings of a poet-heart |