Part 15 (1/2)

His pa.s.sion-stricken Sappho seems alive-- Before her none can ever feel alone, For on her face emotions so do strive That we forget she is but pallid stone; And all her tragedy of love and woe Is told us in the chilly marble's snow.

Bacchante, with her vine-crowned hair, Leaps to the cymbal-measured dance With such a pa.s.sion in her air-- Upon her brow--upon her lips-- As thrills you to the finger-tips, And fascinates your glance.

These are, as 'twere, three of his Songs in stone-- The first full of the tenderness of love, Speaking of moon-rise, and the low wind's call: The second of love's tragedy and fall; The third of shrill, mad laughter, and the tone Of festal music, on whose rise and fall Swift-footed dancers follow.

n.o.bler than these sweet lyric dreams, Dreamt out beside Italia's streams, He'd worked some Epic studies out, in part-- To leave them incomplete his chiefest pain When the low pulses of his failing heart Admonished him of death.

Ay! he had soared upon a lofty wing, Wet with the purple and encrimsoned rain Of dreams, whose clouds had floated o'er his brain Until it ached with glories.

If you would see his Epic studies, go-- Go with the student from his dim arcade-- Halt where the Statesman standeth in the hall, And mark how careless voices hush and fall, And all light talk to sudden pause is brought In presence of the n.o.ble type of thought-- Embodied Independence which he wrought From stone of far Carrara.

View his Columbus: Hero grand and meek, Scarred 'mid the battle's long-protracted brunt-- Palos and Salvador stamped on his front, With not a line about it, poor or weak-- A second Atlas, bearing on his brow A New World, just discovered.

Go see Virginia's wise, majestic face With some faint shadow of her coming woe Writ on the broad, expansive, virgin snow Of her imperial forehead, just as though Some disembodied Prophet-hand of eld The Sculptor's chisel in its touch had held, Foreshadowing her coming crown of thorns-- Her crown and her great glory!

These of the many; but they are enough-- Enough to show that I have rightly said The marble's snow bids back from him decay, He sleepeth long; but sleeps not with the dead Who die, and are forgotten ere the clay Heaped over them hath hardened in the sun.

This much of Galt, the Artist: Of the man Fain would I speak, but in sad sooth I can Ne'er find the words wherein to tell How he was loved, or yet how well He did deserve it.

All things of beauty were to him delight-- The sunset's clouds--the turret rent apart-- The stars which glitter in the noon of night-- Spoke in one voice unto his mind and heart, His love of Nature made his love of Art, And had his span Of life been longer He had surely done Such n.o.ble things that he Like to a soaring eagle would have been At last--lost in the sun!

TO THE POET-PRIEST RYAN.

_IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF A COPY OF HIS POEMS_.

Himself I read beneath the words he writes ...

I may come back and sing again.--RYAN.

I.

This Bard's to me a whole-souled man In honesty and might, For when he sees Wrong in the van He leaps like any Knight To horse, and charging on the wrong Smites it with the great sword of Song.

II.

Beneath the ca.s.sock of the Priest There throbs another heart-- Another--but 'tis not the least-- Which in his Lays takes part, So that 'mid clash of Swords and Spears There is no lack of Pity's tears.

III.

This other heart is brave and soft, As such hearts always are, And plumes itself, a bird aloft, When Morning's gates unbar-- Till high it soars above the sod Bathed in the very light of G.o.d.

IV.