Volume I Part 26 (1/2)

By grace of G.o.d: his face is stern As one compelled, in spite of scorn, To teach a truth he would not learn.

And Ossian, dimly seen or guessed; Once counted greater than the rest, When mountain-winds blew out his vest.

And Spenser drooped his dreaming head (With languid sleep-smile you had said From his own verse engendered)

On Ariosto's, till they ran Their curls in one: the Italian Shot nimbler heat of bolder man

From his fine lids. And Dante stern And sweet, whose spirit was an urn For wine and milk poured out in turn.

Hard-souled Alfieri; and fancy-willed Boiardo, who with laughter filled The pauses of the jostled s.h.i.+eld.

And Berni, with a hand stretched out To sleek that storm. And, not without The wreath he died in and the doubt

He died by, Ta.s.so, bard and lover, Whose visions were too thin to cover The face of a false woman over.

And soft Racine; and grave Corneille, The orator of rhymes, whose wail Scarce shook his purple. And Petrarch pale,

From whose brain-lighted heart were thrown A thousand thoughts beneath the sun, Each lucid with the name of One.

And Camoens, with that look he had, Compelling India's Genius sad From the wave through the Lusiad,--

The murmurs of the storm-cape ocean Indrawn in vibrative emotion Along the verse. And, while devotion

In his wild eyes fantastic shone Under the tonsure blown upon By airs celestial, Calderon.

And bold De Vega, who breathed quick Verse after verse, till death's old trick Put pause to life and rhetoric.

And Goethe, with that reaching eye His soul reached out from, far and high, And fell from inner ent.i.ty.

And Schiller, with heroic front Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon 't, Too large for wreath of modern wont.

And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine; That mark upon his lip is wine.

Here, Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim: The shapes of suns and stars did swim Like clouds from them, and granted him

G.o.d for sole vision. Cowley, there, Whose active fancy debonair Drew straws like amber--foul to fair.

Drayton and Browne, with smiles they drew From outward nature, still kept new From their own inward nature true.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

And Burns, with pungent pa.s.sionings Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings.

And Sh.e.l.ley, in his white ideal, All statue-blind. And Keats the real Adonis with the hymeneal

Fresh vernal buds half sunk between His youthful curls, kissed straight and sheen In his Rome-grave, by Venus queen.

And poor, proud Byron, sad as grave And salt as life; forlornly brave, And quivering with the dart he drave.

And visionary Coleridge, who Did sweep his thoughts as angels do Their wings with cadence up the Blue.