THE FACE THESE dreary hours of hopeless gloom I saw it first when in the dance I saw it next, a thousand times; What was I then, that others' thought I saw it last, when black and white Although my scorn that face did maim, THE RHAPSODISTS Philip James Bailey FROM "FESTUS" YOUTH, LOVE, AND DEATH Lucifer. And we might trust these youths and maidens fair, The world was made for nothing but love, love. Now I think it was made most to be burn'd. Festus. The night is glooming on us. It is the hour When lovers will speak lowly, for the sake Of being nigh each other; and when love Shoots up the eye, like morning on the east, Making amends for the long northern night They pass'd, ere either knew the other lov'd ; The hour of hearts! Say gray-beards what they please, The heart of age is like an emptied wine cup; Loathes life the moment that life's riddle is read. The knot of our existence solv'd, all things Loose-ended lie, and useless. Life is had And lo! we sigh, and say, can this be all? It is not what we thought; it is very well, But we want something more. There is but death. And when we have said and seen, done, had, enjoy'd And suffer'd, maybe, all we have wish'd or fear'd, From fame to ruin, and from love to loathing, There can come but one more change -try it death. When, like a sea-shell with its sea-born strain, My soul aye rang with music of the lyre, And my heart shed its lore as leaves their dew A honey dew, and throve on what it shed. All things I lov'd; but song I lov'd in chief. Imagination is the air of mind, Judgment its earth and memory its main, Passion its fire. I was at home in heaven. Swiftlike, I liv'd above; once touching earth, The meanest thing might master me: long wings But baffled. Still and still I harp'd on song. Oh! to create within the mind is bliss, And shaping forth the lofty thought, or lovely, We seek not, need not heaven: and when the thought, Cloudy and shapeless, first forms on the mind, Slow darkening into some gigantic make, How the heart shakes with pride and fear, as heaven Quakes under its own thunder; or as might, Of old, the mortal mother of a god, When first she saw him lessening up the skies. And I began the toil divine of verse, Which, like a burning bush, doth guest a god. But this was only wing-flapping flight; - not Men who have forged gods utter'd→ made them pass: Sons of the sons of God, who in olden days Did leave their passionless heaven for earth and woman, Brought an immortal to a mortal breast, And, rainbowlike the sweet earth clasping, left A bright precipitate of soul, which lives Ever, and through the lines of sullen men, The dumb array of ages, speaks for all; Flashing by fits, like fire from an enemy's front; Whose thoughts, like bars of sunshine in shut rooms, Mid gloom, all glory, win the world to light; Who make their very follies like their souls, And like the young moon with a ragged edge, Still in their imperfection beautiful; Whose weaknesses are lovely as their strengths, Like the white nebulous matter between |