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Ranolf and Amohia

X

X.

Now of his feelings in the after-day,
Of all his findings by Life's varied way,
But little further—little fuller—may
This realistic record sing or say.

First—for the tasks of Life;—whate'er the sphere
Wherein his fleeting forces may be spent
Will he not learn, herein too, Life was lent
But as one stage for our development?—
God's studio is this Earth,
page 480 And we, his pupils, for instruction sent,
Are pottering at our work of little worth
But to attain to faculties that here
Reach no perfection, or at least complete
No works that seem for such perfection meet.
How oft does mastery, even the most assure,
Moral or mental, seem in vain secured!
Our poets—artists—heroes—those
Whose ripening powers or ripened could not fail.
Their transient tools and organs lose,
Oft when their Souls seem fittest to prevail—
Most apt for thoughts or deeds sublime!
As if their lives were but a blossoming time;
They students—and the works they leave,
So far beneath what they conceive,
But tyros' crude essays lo what in vain
Their growing Souls may long indeed
In this life—but in this life are in train
Only in larger—loftier to achieve;
Essaying here, but elsewhere to succeed.
Till not alone the buds of beauty left
By Nature's younger darlings, soon bereft
Of life and lyre—too soon!—a Shelley made
All spirit—nay—frail spirit-tortured flesh,
Self-fevering through false theories, griefs and heats
And phantasms, to pure Spirit; or a Keats,
In senses for a human Soul too fresh
And keen and fine, too dangerously arrayed—
Our young-eyed Cherubim, who like poor bees
Over a citron-blossom lifeless curled,
Not hall their honey gathered for the world,
Died at their sweet vocation—O not these—
Nor the rathe buds of amaranth they seize—
page 481 But roses fully blown; the gorgeous train
Of bright humanities a Shakspcare's brain
Bids into being, deathless and intense,
With hue for hue, and gleam for gleam
Reflecting God's creations till they seem
The double Rainbow's second Arch, in stripe
And stain as lovely as its archetype!—
Even these, to his great Spirit, taken hence
Seem left but like the drooping coronet
Of threaded anthers lunging still around
Some liny nectarine-fruit, green, newly-set;
The poor triumphant relic that once crowned
Its flowering-time incipient, immature;
Just dropping from the fruit that must expand
To golden richness in the radiance pure
Of wider Skies and some diviner Land!