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And putting us to ignorance again.

For music,-why, I have combined the moods,
Inventing one. In brief, all arts are mine;
Thus much the people know and recognise,
Throughout our seventeen islands. Marvel not.
We of these latter days, with greater mind
Than our forerunners, since more composite,
Look not so great, beside their simple way,
To a judge who only sees one way at once,
One mind-point and no other at a time,—
Compares the small part of a man of us
With some whole man of the heroic age,
Great in his way-not ours, nor meant for ours.
And ours is greater, had we skill to know:
For, what we call this life of men on earth,
This sequence of the soul's achievements here,
Being, as I find much reason to conceive,
Intended to be viewed eventually

As a great whole, not analysed to parts,
But each part having reference to all,—
How shall a certain part, pronounced complete,
Endure effacement by another part?

Was the thing done?-then, what's to do again?
See, in the chequered pavement opposite,
Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb,
And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid-
He did not overlay them, superimpose
The new upon the old and blot it out,
But laid them on at level in his work,
Making at last a picture; there it lies.
So first the perfect separate forms were made,
The portions of mankind; and after, so,
Occurred the combination of the same.
For where had been a progress, otherwise?
Mankind, made up of all the single men,—
In such a synthesis the labour ends.

Now mark me! those divine men of old time

CLEON.

Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point

The outside verge that rounds our faculty;

And where they reached, who can do more than reach?

It takes but little water just to touch

At some one point the inside of a sphere,

And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest

In due succession: but the finer air

Which not so palpably nor obviously,
Though no less universally, can touch

The whole circumference of that emptied sphere,
Fills it more fully than the water did;
Holds thrice the weight of water in itself
Resolved into a subtler element.

And yet the vulgar call the sphere first full
Up to the visible height—and after, void;
Not knowing air's more hidden properties.
And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus
To vindicate his purpose in our life:
Why stay we on the earth unless to grow?
Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out,
That he or other god descended here
And, once for all, showed simultaneously
What, in its nature, never can be shown
Piecemeal or in succession:-showed, I say,
The worth both absolute and relative
Of all his children from the birth of time,
His instruments for all appointed work.
I now go on to image,-might we hear

The judgment which should give the due to each,
Show where the labour lay and where the ease,
And prove Zeus' self, the latent everywhere!
This is a dream:-but no dream, let us hope,
That years and days, the summers and the springs,
Follow each other with unwaning powers.
The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far,
Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock;
The suave plum than the savage-tasted drupe;

Modern Poets.

20

305

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The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet;

The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers;
That young and tender crescent moon, thy slave,
Sleeping upon her robe as if on clouds,
Refines upon the women of my youth.
What, and the soul alone deteriorates?
I have not chanted verse like Homer, no-
Nor swept string like Terpander, no-nor carved
And painted men like Phidias and his friend:
I am not great as they are, point by point.
But I have entered into sympathy

With these four, running these into one soul,
Who, separate, ignored each others' arts.
Say, is it nothing that I know them all?

The wild flower was the larger; I have dashed
Rose-blood upon its petals, pricked its cup's
Honey with wine, and driven its seed to fruit,
And show a better flower if not so large:
I stand myself. Refer this to the gods
Whose gift alone it is! which, shall I dare
(All pride apart) upon the absurd pretext
That such a gift by chance lay in my hand,
Discourse of lightly or depreciate?

It might have fallen to another's hand: what then?
I pass too surely: let at least truth stay!

And next, of what thou followest on to ask.
This being with me as I declare, O king,
My works, in all these varicoloured kinds,
So done by me, accepted so by men-
Thou askest, if (my soul thus in men's hearts)
I must not be accounted to attain

The very crown and proper end of life?
Inquiring thence how, now life closeth up,
I face death with success in my right hand:
Whether I fear death less than dost thyself

66

CLEON.

The fortunate of men? "For" (writest thou)
"Thou leavest much behind, while I leave nought.
"Thy life stays in the poems men shall sing,
"The pictures men shall study; while my life,
Complete and whole now in its power and joy,
"Dies altogether with my brain and arm,
"Is lost indeed; since, what survives myself?
"The brazen statue to o'erlook my grave,
"Set on the promontory which I named.
"And that—some supple courtier of my heir
"Shall use its robed and sceptred arm, perhaps,
"To fix the rope to, which best drags it down.
"I go then: triumph thou, who dost not go!"

Nay, thou art worthy of hearing my whole mind.
Is this apparent, when thou turn'st to muse
Upon the scheme of earth and man in chief,
That admiration grows as knowledge grows?
That imperfection means perfection hid,
Reserved in part, to grace the after-time?
If, in the morning of philosophy,

Ere aught had been recorded, nay perceived,
Thou, with the light now in thee, couldst have looked
On all earth's tenantry, from worm to bird,

Ere man, her last, appeared upon the stage—

Thou wouldst have seen them perfect, and deduced
The perfectness of others yet unseen.

Conceding which,—had Zeus then questioned thee
"Shall I go on a step, improve on this,

"Do more for visible creatures than is done?"
Thou wouldst have answered, "Ay, by making each
"Grow conscious in himself-by that alone.

307

"All's perfect else: the shell sucks fast the rock, "The fish strikes through the sea, the snake both swims "And slides, forth range the beasts, the birds take flight,

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"Till life's mechanics can no further go-
"And all this joy in natural life is put
"Like fire from off thy finger into each,
"So exquisitely perfect is the same.

"But 'tis pure fire, and they mere matter are;
"It has them, not they it; and so I choose

"For man, thy last premeditated work

66

(If I might add a glory to the scherne)

"That a third thing should stand apart from both, "A quality arise within his soul,

"Which, intro-active, made to supervise
"And feel the force it has, may view itself,
"And so be happy." Man might live at first
The animal life: but is there nothing more?
In due time, let him critically learn
How he lives; and, the more he gets to know
Of his own life's adaptabilities,

The more joy-giving will his life become.
Thus man, who hath this quality, is best.

But thou, king, hadst more reasonably said: "Let progress end at once,-man make no step "Beyond the natural man, the better beast, "Using his senses, not the sense of sense." In man there's failure, only since he left The lower and inconscious forms of life. We called it an advance, the rendering plain Man's spirit might grow conscious of man's life, And, by new lore so added to the old,

Take each step higher over the brute's head.
Thus grew the only life, the pleasure-house,
Watch-tower and treasure-fortress of the soul,
Which whole surrounding flats of natural life
Seemed only fit to yield subsistence to;
A tower that crowns a country. But alas,

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