Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (641 page)

Driving my soul with scientific hail

That shuts the landscape out with particles;

Insisting that the Palingenesis

Means telegraphs and measure of the rate

At which the stars move — nobody knows where.

So far, my Rosencranz, we are at one.

But not when you blaspheme the life of Art,

The sweet perennial youth of Poesy,

Which asks no logic but its sensuous growth,

No right but loveliness; which fearless strolls

Betwixt the burning mountain and the sea,

Reckless of earthquake and the lava stream,

Filling its hour with beauty. It knows naught

Of bitter strife, denial, grim resolve.

Sour resignation, busy emphasis

Of fresh illusions named the new-born True,

Old Error’s latest child; but as a lake

Images all things, yet within its depths

Dreams them all lovelier — thrills with sound

And makes a harp of plenteous liquid chords —

So Art or Poesy: we its votaries

Are the Olympians, fortunately born

From the elemental mixture; ‘t is our lot

To pass more swiftly than the Delian God,

But still the earth breaks into flowers for us,

And mortal sorrows when they reach our ears

Are dying falls to melody divine.

Hatred, war, vice, crime, sin, those human storms,

Cyclones, floods, what you will — outbursts of force —

Feed art with contrast, give the grander touch

To the master’s pencil and the poet’s song,

Serve as Vesuvian fires or navies tossed

On yawning waters, which when viewed afar

Deepen the calm sublime of those choice souls

Who keep the heights of poesy, and turn

A fleckless mirror to the various world,

Giving its many-named and fitful flux

An imaged, harmless, spiritual life,

With pure selection, native to art’s frame,

Of beauty only, save its minor scale

Of ill and pain to give the ideal joy

A keener edge. This is a mongrel globe;

All finer being wrought from its coarse earth

Is but accepted privilege: what else

Your boasted virtue, which proclaims itself

A good above the average consciousness?

Nature exists by partiality

(Each planet’s poise must carry two extremes

With verging breadths of minor wretchedness):

We are her favourites and accept our wings.

For your accusal, Rosencranz, that art

Shares in the dread and weakness of the time,

I hold it null; since art or poesy pure,

Being blameless by all standards save her own,

Takes no account of modern or antique

In morals, science, or philosophy:

No dull elenchus makes a yoke for her,

Whose law and measure are the sweet consent

Of sensibilities that move apart

From rise or fall of systems, states or creeds —

Apart from what Philistines call man’s weal.”

“ Ay, we all know those votaries of the Muse

Ravished with singing till they quite forgot

Their manhood, sang, and gaped, and took no food,

Then died of emptiness, and for reward

Lived on as grasshoppers “ — Laertes thus:

But then he checked himself as one who feels

His muscles dangerous, and Guildenstern

Filled up the pause with calmer confidence.

“You use your wings, my Osric, poise yourself

Safely outside all reach of argument,

Then dogmatize at will (a method known

To ancient women and philosophers,

Nay, to Philistines whom you most abhor);

Else, could an arrow reach you, I should ask

Whence came taste, beauty, sensibilities

Refined to preference infallible?

Doubtless, ye’re gods — these odours ye inhale,

A sacrificial scent. But how, I pray,

Are odours made, if not by gradual change

Of sense or substance? Is your beautiful

A seedless, rootless flower, or has it grown

With human growth, which means the rising sun

Of human struggle, order, knowledge? — sense

Trained to a fuller record, more exact —

To truer guidance of each passionate force?

Get me your roseate flesh without the blood;

Get fine aromas without structure wrought

From simpler being into manifold:

Then and then only flaunt your Beautiful

As what can live apart from thought, creeds, states.

Which mean life’s structure. Osric, I beseech —

The infallible should be more catholic —

Join in a war-dance with the cannibals,

Hear Chinese music, love a face tattooed,

Give adoration to a pointed skull,

And think the Hindu Siva looks divine:

‘T is art, ‘t is poesy. Say, you object:

How came you by that lofty dissidence,

If not through changes in the social man

Widening his consciousness from Here and Now

To larger wholes beyond the reach of sense;

Controlling to a fuller harmony

The thrill of passion and the rule of fact;

And paling false ideals in the light

Of full-rayed sensibilities which blend

Truth and desire? Taste, beauty, what are they

But the soul’s choice toward perfect bias wrought

By finer balance of a fuller growth —

Sense brought to subtlest metamorphosis

Through love, thought, joy — the general human store

Which grows from all life’s functions? As the plant

Holds its corolla, purple, delicate,

Solely as outflush of that energy

Which moves transformingly in root and branch.”

Guildenstern paused, and Hamlet quivering

Since Osric spoke, in transit imminent

From catholic striving into laxity,

Ventured his word. “Seems to me, Guildenstern,

Your argument, though shattering Osric’s point

That sensibilities can move apart

From social order, yet has not annulled

His thesis that the life of poesy

(Admitting it must grow from out the whole)

Has separate functions, a transfigured realm

Freed from the rigours of the practical,

Where what is hidden from the grosser world —

Stormed down by roar of engines and the shouts

Of eager concourse — rises beauteous

As voice of water-drops in sapphire caves;

A realm where finest spirits have free sway

In exquisite selection, uncontrolled

By hard material necessity

Of cause and consequence. For you will grant

The Ideal has discoveries which ask

No test, no faith, save that we joy in them:

A new-found continent, with spreading lands

Where pleasure charters all, where virtue, rank,

Use, right, and truth have but one name, Delight.

Thus Art’s creations, when etherealized

To least admixture of the grosser fact

Delight may stamp as highest.”

“ Possible ! ‘‘

Said Guildenstern, with touch of weariness,

“But then we might dispute of what is gross,

What high, what low.”

“ Nay,” said Laertes, “ ask

The mightiest makers who have reigned, still reign

Within the ideal realm. See if their thought

Be drained of practice and the thick warm blood

Of hearts that beat in action various

Through the wide drama of the struggling world.

Good-by, Horatio.”

Each now said “Good-by.”

Such breakfast, such beginning of the day

Is more than half the whole. The sun was hot

On southward branches of the meadow elms,

The shadows slowly farther crept and veered

Like changing memories, and Hamlet strolled

Alone and dubious on the empurpled path

Between the waving grasses of new June

Close by the stream where well-compacted boats

Were moored or moving with a lazy creak

To the soft dip of oars. All sounds were light

As tiny silver bells upon the robes