The Dispute of the Poets

An idyll scene of happy Sicily!
Out from its sacred grove on grassy slopes
Smiles a fair temple, vow'd to some sweet Power
Of Nature deified. In broad degrees
From flower-wreath'd porticos the shining stairs,
Through tiers of Myrtle in Corinthian urns,
Glide to the shimmer of an argent lake.
Calm rest the swans upon the glassy wave,
Save where the younger cygnets, newly-pair'd,
Through floating brakes of water-lilies, sail
Slowly in sunlight down to islets dim.
But farther on, the lake subsides away
Into the lapsing of a shadowy rill
Melodious with the chime of falls as sweet
As (heard by Pan in Arethusan glades)
The silvery talk of meeting Naiades.

Where cool the sunbeam slants through ilex-boughs,
The fane above them and the rill below,
Two forms recline; nor, e'er in Arcady
Did fairer Manhood win an Oread's love,
Or lift diviner brows to earliest stars.

The one of brighter hues, and darker curls
Clustering and purple as the fruit o' the vine,
Seem'd like that Summer-Idol of rich life
Whom sensuous Greece, inebriate with delight,
From Orient myth and symbol-worship brought
To blue Cithaeron blithe with bounding faun
And wood-nymph wild,--Nature's young Lord, Iacchus!
Bent o'er the sparkling brook, with careless hand
From sedge or sward, he pluck'd or reed or flower,
Casting away light wreaths on playful waves;
While,--as the curious ripple murmur'd round
Its odorous prey, and eddying whirl'd it on
O'er pebbles glancing sheen to sunny falls,--
He laugh'd, as childhood laughs, in such frank glee
The very leaves upon the ilex danced
Joyous, as at some mirthful wind in May.

The other, though the younger, more serene,
And to the casual gaze severer far,
To that bright comrade-shape; by contrast seem'd
As serious Morn, star-crown'd on Spartan hills,
To Noon, when hyacinths flush through Enna's vales,
Or murmurous winglets hum 'mid Indian palms.
Such beauty his as the first Dorian bore
From the far birthplace of Homeric men,
Beyond the steeps of Boreal Thessaly,
When to the swart Pelasgic Autocthon
The blue-eyed Pallas came with lifted spear,
And, her twin type of the fair-featured North.
Phoebus, the archer with the golden hair.
Bright was the one as Syrian Adon-ai,
Charming the goddess born from roseate seas;
And while the other, leaning on his lyre,
Lifted the azure light of earnest eyes
From flower and wave to the remotest hill
On which the soft horizon melted down,
Ev'n so methought had gazed Endymion,
With looks estranged from the luxuriant day,
To the far Latmos steep--where holy dreams
Nightly renew'd the kisses of the Moon.

Entranced I stood, and held my breath to hear
The words that seem'd to warm upon their lips,
As if such contest as two Nightingales
Wage, emulous in music, on the peace
That surely dwelt between them, had anon
Forced its mellifluous anger:--

Then I learn'd
That the fair Two were orphans, rear'd to youth
Song and the lyre, where ringdoves coo remote,
And loitering bees cull sweets in Hyblan dells:
And that their discord, as their union, grew
Out of their rivalry in lyre and song.
Therewith did each in the accustom'd war
Of pastoral singers in Sicilian noons
Strive for his Right--(O Memory aid me now!)
In the sweet quarrel of alternate hymns.

ANTHIOS.

As the sunlight that plays on a stream,
As the zephyr that rustles a leaf,
On my soul comes the joy of the beam,
And a zephyr can stir it to grief.

Whether pleasure or pain be decreed,
My voice but in music is heard;
By the sunny wave murmurs the reed;
From the sighing leaf carols the bird.--

LYKEGENES.

Unto her hierarch Nature's voices come
But through the labyrinthine cells of Thought,
Not at the Porch, doth Isis hold her home,
Not to the Tyro are her mysteries taught;

The secret dews of many a starry night
Feed the vast ocean's stately ebb and flow;
The leaf is restless where the branch is slight,
Still are the boughs whose shades stretch far below.

ANTHIOS.

As the skylark that mounts
With the dawn to the sun,
As the flash from the founts
Of the swift Helicon,

Song comes;--and I sing!
Wouldst thou question me more?
Ask the wave or the wing
Why it sparkle or soar!

LYKEGENES.

Full be the soul if swift the inspiration!
The corn-flower opens as the sheaves are rife;
Song is the twin of golden Contemplation
The harvest-flower of life.

The Cloud-compeller's bolt the eagle bears,
But when the wings the strength divine have won,
Full many a flight around the rock prepares
The Aspirer towards the Sun;

Progressive heights to gradual effort given,
Till, all the plumes in light supreme unfurl'd,
It halts;--and knits unto the dome of heaven
This pendant ball--the World.

ANTHIOS.

Hail, O hail, Pierides,
Free Harmonia's zoneless daughters,
Whom abrupt the Moenad sees
By the marge of moonlit waters,

Weaving joy in choral measure
To no law but your sweet pleasure;
Wanton winds in loosen'd hair
Lifting gold that gilds the air;

Say, beneath what starry skies
Lurk the herbs that purge the eyes?
On what hill-tops should we cull
The moly of the Beautiful?
What the charm the soul to capture
In the cestus-belt of rapture,
When the senses, trembling under,
Glass the Shadow-land of Wonder,
And no human hand is stealing
O'er the music-scale of Feeling?

As ceased the question rose delicious winds
Stirring the waves that kiss'd the tuneful reeds,
And all the wealth of sweets in bells of flowers;
So that, methought, out from all life, the Muse
Murmur'd responses low, and echo'd "FEELING!"

LYKEGENES.

Divine Corycides,
Whose chosen haunts are in mysterious cells,
And alleys dim through gleaming laurel-trees
Dusking the shrine of Delphian oracles,--
Under whose whispering shade
Sits the lone Pythian Maid,
Whose soul is as the glass of human things;
While up from bubbling streams
In mists arise the Dreams
Pale with the future of tiara'd kings--
Say, what the charm which from ambrosial domes
Draws the Immortal to Time's brazen towers,
When on the soul the gentle Thunderer comes--
Comes but in golden showers?
When, through the sealed portals of the sense,
Fluent as air the Glory glides unsought;
And the serene effulgent Influence
Rains all the wealth of heaven upon the thought?

And as the questions ceased, fell every wind.
The ilex-boughs droop'd heavy as the hush
In which the prophet Doves brood weird and calm
Amid Dodonian groves;--the broken light
On crisped waves grew smooth; on earth, in heaven,
The inexpressive majesty of Silence
Pass'd as some Orient sovereign to his throne,
When all the murmurs cease, and every brow
Bends down in awe, and not a breath is heard.
Yet spoke that stillness of the Eternal Mind
That thinks, and, thinking, evermore creates;
And Nature seem'd to answer Poesy
From her deep heart, in thought re-echoing "THOUGHT."

ANTHIOS.

Thou, whose silver lute contended
With the careless reed of Pan--
Thou whose wanton youth descended
To the vales Arcadian,
At whose coming heavenlier joy
Lighteth even Jove's abode,
Ever blooming as the boy
Through thine ages as the god;
Fair Apollo, if the singer
Be like thee the gladness-bringer;
If the nectar he distil
Make the worn earth useful still;
As thyself when thou wert driven
To the Tempe from the heaven,
As the infant over whom
Saturn bends his brows of gloom,
Roves he not the world a-maying,
From his Idan halls exiled;
Or with Time repose in playing
As with Saturn's looks the child.

Therewith from far, where unseen hamlets lay
In wooded valleys green, came mellowly
Laughter and infant voices, borne perchance
From the light hearts of happy Children, sporting
Round some meek Mother's knee;--ev'n so, methought
Did the familiar, human, innocent, gladness
Through golden Childhood answer Song, "THE CHILD."

LYKEGENES.

Lord of lustrating streams,
And altars pure, appalling secret Crime,
Eternal Splendour, whose all-searching beams
Illume with life the universe of Time,
All our own fates thy shrine reveals to us;
Thither comes Wisdom from the thrones of earth,
The unraveller of the sphinx--blind Oedipus,
Who knows not ev'n his birth!
On whom, Apollo, does thy presence shine
Through the clear daylight of translucent song?
Only to him who serveth at the shrine,
The priesthood can belong!
After due and deep probation,
Only dawns thy revelation
Unto the devout beseecher
Taught by thee to grow the teacher:
Shall the bearer of thy bow
Let the shafts at random go?
If the altar be divine,
Is the sacrifice a feast?
Should our hands the garland twine
For the reveller or the priest?

Therewith from out the temple on the hill
Broke the rich swell of fifes and choral lyres,
And the long melody of such large hymns,
As to the conquest of the Python-slayer,
Hallow'd thy lofty chant, Calliope!
Thus from the penetralian aisles divine
The solemn God replied to Song, "THE PRIEST."

ANTHIOS.

And who can bind in formal duty
The Protean shapes of airy Beauty?
Who tune the Teian's lyre of gold
To priestly hymns in temples cold?
Accept the playmate by thy side,
Ordain'd to charm thee, not to guide.
The stream reflects each curve on shore,
And Song alike thy good and error;
Let Wisdom be the monitor,
But Song should be the mirror.
To truth direct while Science goes
With measured pace and sober eye;
The simplest wild-flower more bestows
Than Egypt's lore, on Poesy.

The Magian seer who counts the stars,
Regrets the cloud that veils his skies;
To me, the Greek, the clouds are cars
From which bend down divinities!

Like cloud itself this common day
Let Fancy make awhile the duller,
Its iris in the cloud shall play,
And weave thy world the pomp of colour.

He paused; as if in concord with the Song
Seem'd to flash forth the universe of hues
In the Sicilian summer: on the banks
Crocus, and hyacinth, and anemone,
Superb narcissus, Cytherea's rose,
And woodbine lush, and lilies silver-starr'd;
And delicate cloudlets blush'd in lucent skies;
And yellowing sunbeams shot through purple waves;
And still from bough to bough the wings of birds,
And still from flower to flower the gorgeous dyes
Of the gay insect-revellers wandering went--
And as I look'd I murmur'd, "Singer, yes,
As COLOUR to the world, so song to life!"

LYKEGENES.

Conceal'd from Saturn's deathful frown
The wild Curetes strove,
By chant and cymbal clash, to drown
The infant cries of Jove.
But when, full-grown, the Thunder-king,
Triumphant o'er the Titan's fall,
And throned in Ida, look'd on all,
And all subjected saw;
Saw the sublime Uranian Ring,
And every joyous living thing,
Calm'd into love beneath his tranquil law;--
Then straight above, below, around,
His voice was heard in every sound;
The mountain peal'd it through the cave;
The whirlwind to the answering wave;
By loneliest stream, by deepest dell,
It murmur'd in mysterious Pan;
No less than in the golden shell
From which the falls of music well
O'er floors Olympian!
For Jove in all that breathes must dwell,
And speak through all to Man.

Singer, who asketh Hermes for his rod,
To lead men's souls into Elysian bowers,
To whose belief the alter'd earth is trod
Still by Kronidian Powers,
If through thy veins the purer tide hath been
Pour'd from the nectar-streams in Hebe's urn,
That thou mightst both without thee and within
Feel the pervading Jove--wouldst thou return
To the dark time of old,
When Earth-born Force the Heir of Heaven controll'd,
And with thy tinkling brass aspire
To stifle Nature's music-choir,
And drown the voice of God?

O Light, thou poetry of Heaven,
That glid'st through hollow air thy way,
That fill'st the starry founts of Even,
And all the azure seas of Day;
Give to my song thy glorious flow,
That while it glads it may illume,
Whether it gild the iris' bow,
And part its rays amid the gloom;
Or whether, one broad tranquil stream,
It break in no fantastic dyes,
But calmly weaving beam on beam,
Make Heaven distinct to human eyes;
A truth that floats serene and clear,
'Twixt Gods and men an atmosphere;
Less seen itself than bringing all to sight,
And to man's soul what to man's world is Light.

Then, as the Singer ceased, the western sun
Halted a moment o'er the roseate hill
Hush'd in pellucent air; and all the crests
Of the still groves, and all the undulous curves
Of far-off headlands stood distinctly soft
Against the unfathomable purple skies,
And linking in my thought the outward shows
Of Beauty with the inward types sublime,
By which through Beauty poets lead to Knowledge,
And are the lamps of Nature,
"Yes," I murmur'd,
"Song is to soul what unto life is LIGHT!"

But gliding now behind the steeps it flush'd,
The disk of day sunk gradual, gradual down,
And in the homage of the old Religion
To the departing Sun,--the rival two
Ceased their dispute, and bent sweet serious brows
In chorus with the cusps of bended flowers,
Sighing their joint "Farewell, O golden Sun!"
Now Hesper came, the gentle shepherd-star,
Bright as when Moschus sung to it;--along
The sacred grove, and through the Parian shafts
Of the pale temple, shot the glistening rays,
And trembled in the tremor of the wave:--
Then the fair rivals, as they silent rose,
Turn'd each to each in brotherlike embrace;
Lone amid starry solitude they stood,
In equal beauty clasp'd,--and both divine.