ILLE That is our modern hope, and by its light We are but critics, or but half create, HIC And yet, The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself, That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ. ILLE And did he find himself, The man that Lapo and that Guido knew? From doored and windowed cliff, or half upturned Among the coarse grass and the camel dung. He set his chisel to the hardest stone; Being mocked by Guido for his lecherous life. Derided and deriding, driven out To climb that stair and eat that bitter bread, He found the unpersuadable justice, he found The most exalted lady loved by a man. HIC Yet surely there are men who have made their art Out of no tragic war; lovers of life, ILLE No, not sing, For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade. bours, The sentimentalist himself; while art What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair? HIC And yet, No one denies to Keats love of the world, Remember his deliberate happiness. ILLE His art is happy, but who knows his mind? For certainly he sank into his grave, keeperLuxuriant song. HIC Why should you leave the lamp Burning alone beside an open book, ILLE Because I seek an image, not a book; Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts. I call to the mysterious one who yet Shall walk the wet sand by the water's edge, And look most like me, being indeed my double, And prove of all imaginable things ANIMA HOMINIS I WHEN I come home after meeting men who are strange to me, and sometimes even after talking to women, I go over all I have said in gloom and disappointment. Perhaps I have overstated everything from a desire to vex or startle, from hostility that is but fear; or all my natural thoughts have been drowned by an undisciplined sympathy. My fellowdiners have hardly seemed of mixed humanity, and how should I keep my head among images of good and evil, crude allegories. But when I shut my door and light the candle, I invite a Marmorean Muse, an art, where no thought or emotion has come to mind because another man has thought or felt something different, for now there must be no reaction, action only, and the world must move my heart but to the heart's discovery of itself, and I begin to dream of eyelids that do not quiver before the bayonet: all my thoughts have ease and joy, I am all |