V.

To tutors now and long-left tasks restored,
The sea-emboldened, self-reliant Boy
Soon grew enamoured of his new employ.
And many things those tutors never meant
Into a mind of such inquiring bent
His classics and his metaphysics poured.
But most he loved, could ne'er enough adore
The Godlike spirit of that grand Greek lore
That first taught Man his glorious being's height;
Taught him to stand, the Universe before,
Erect in moral, intellectual might,
And brave, in strength of Soul, the adverse infinite.
How would their strains his kindling bosom warm,
Those daring darling Poets, who enshrined
The freest Spirit in the purest Form—
In matchless Beauty such consummate Mind.
How would he triumph with the Theban Maid
Who, in no armour but instinctive sense,
The panoply of conscious right, arrayed,
Her lofty sentiment her sole defence,
Risked all the murderous rage of tyrant force I
To snatch a burial for a brother's corse;
Though all the gods—all worldly wisdom's saws,
All cherished loves and all Convention's laws,
Denounced herself and spurned her holy cause.
Antigone could teach him that the test
Of right and wrong lay in his own free breast;
page 30 That right was right, despite high-seated wrong
And throned Authority by Custom strong!
That Man of all external aid bereft,
Had still himself and staunch endurance left;
Could stand above all Circumstance elate
And trust high Nature in the fight with Fate.
And when he read the agonizing cries
That vulture-tortured Giant in the skies
Utters in deathless and sublime despair,
Doomed for his love to Man that woe to bear;
And all the sad majestic converse, round
The pinnacles of Caucasus snow-crownt
Swelling like solemn Music, and again
Dying along the illimitable air,
As, one by one, supernal visitants
Come floating up to watch the ghastly pants
And writhings of the Titan, and with vain
Compassion, taunts—temptations vainer still—
Assail his grand unconquerable Will,
And bid him break his voluntary chain,
Abandon Man, scorn that vicarious pain,
And hail the gloomy Tyrant's selfish reign;
When all the student's sense of justice rose,
Stirred by the dauntless Poet's great appeal,
In wrath against the author of such woes,
And his young heart would passionately feel
For the doomed donor of the god-wrong fire;
Think you he ne'er was tempted to inquire,
Was that outworn Olympian rule of Zeus
The only tyranny men called divine?
Was there no other nature-startling use
Of absolute power—no other punishment
Of love, inflicted on the innocent
page 31 At which instinctive Justice would repine?
But most his soul was wonderstruck to see
To what a height humanity could reach
In that divinest hemlock-drinker—he
Who welcomed Death less evil than the breach
Of fealty to his country's laws, or scant
Reliance on the faith he came to teach;
The truths his nature forced him to proclaim—
The necessary outcome of his frame,
Mental and moral—by the innate law
Of evolution for its excellence
Provided—as inevitable thence,
As from the sap of each peculiar plant
The special blossom earth and air must draw—
Trust absolute in the perfect Power above,
His perfect goodness; and what these must prove
(For with the ill around, what other just
Conclusion could he reach, with such a trust?)
That sole relief of every human want,
Soother and solace of the general sigh—
The soul' sunbodied immortality.
And where was ever a sublimer page
Than that which paints the Godsent Prophet-Sage
Cheerily urging with his latest breath
His lofty creed upon his weeping band
Of friends—his very gaoler too, unmanned;
Then standing forth, and with dilating eyes, 1
That look straightforward—bold and calm—bulh Wise'
Into the dread Eternity so nigh,
With one libation to the gods on high,
Drinking the Elixir both of life and death!
And as the deadly influence upward stole
And sobs broke forth he could no more console,
page 32 Lifting the mantle from his failing sight,
Just ere his soaring spirit winged its flight,
To make with accents faint his last bequest—
While haply in those eyes supreme o'er pain
A moment's humorous glimmer shone again—
That votive cock to the medicinal God
Of herbs—his soul's last evidence to be
Of joy at shaking off this mortal clod,
And his triumphant gratitude attest
To one whose potent drug had set him free.