Читать книгу The Book-Lovers' Anthology - Various - Страница 44

Table of Contents

I

Sit here and muse!—it is an antique room—

High-roofed, with casements, through whose purple pane

Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,

Shy as a fearful stranger.

There They reign

(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),

The Kings of Thought!—not crowned until the grave

When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,

The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!

Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,

Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,

All that divide us from the clod ye gave!—

Law—Order—Love—Intelligence—the Sense

Of Beauty—Music and the Minstrel's wreath!—

What were our wanderings if without your goals?

As air and light, the glory ye dispense

Becomes our being—who of us can tell

What he had been, had Cadmus never taught

The art that fixes into form the thought—

Had Plato never spoken from his cell,

Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?

Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakespeare sung!

II

Hark! while we muse, without the walls is heard

The various murmur of the labouring crowd,

How still, within those archive-cells interred,

The Calm Ones reign!—and yet they rouse the loud

Passions and tumults of the circling world!

From them, how many a youthful Tully caught

The zest and ardour of the eager Bar;

From them, how many a young Ambition sought

Gay meteors glancing o'er the sands afar—

By them each restless wing has been unfurled,

And their ghosts urge each rival's rushing car!

They made yon Preacher zealous for the truth;

They made yon Poet wistful for the star;

Gave Age its pastime—fired the cheek of Youth—

The unseen sires of all our beings are,—

III

And now so still! This, Cicero, is thy heart;

I hear it beating through each purple line.

This is thyself, Anacreon—yet, thou art

Wreathed, as in Athens, with the Cnidian vine.

I ope thy pages, Milton, and, behold,

Thy spirit meets me in the haunted ground!—

Sublime and eloquent, as while, of old,

'It flamed and sparkled in its crystal bound;'

These are yourselves—your life of life! The Wise (Minstrel or Sage) out of their books are clay; But in their books, as from their graves, they rise, Angels—that, side by side, upon our way, Walk with and warn us! Hark! the World so loud, And they, the Movers of the World, so still.

What gives this beauty to the grave? the shroud

Scarce wraps the Poet, than at once there cease

Envy and Hate! 'Nine cities claim him dead,

Through which the living Homer begged his bread!'

And what the charm that can such health distil

From withered leaves—oft poisons in their bloom?

We call some books immoral! Do they live? If so, believe me, Time hath made them pure. In Books, the veriest wicked rest in peace— God wills that nothing evil shall endure; The grosser parts fly off and leave the whole, As the dust leaves the disembodied soul! Come from thy niche, Lucretius! Thou didst give Man the black creed of Nothing in the tomb! Well, when we read thee, does the dogma taint? No; with a listless eye we pass it o'er, And linger only on the hues that paint The Poet's spirit lovelier than his lore. None learn from thee to cavil with their God; None commune with thy genius to depart Without a loftier instinct of the heart. Thou mak'st no Atheist—thou but mak'st the mind Richer in gifts which Atheists best confute— Fancy and Thought! 'Tis these that from the sod Lift us! The life which soars above the brute Ever and mightiest, breathes from a great Poet's lute! Lo! that grim Merriment of Hatred;—born Of him,—the Master-Mocker of mankind, Beside the grin of whose malignant spleen Voltaire's gay sarcasm seems a smile serene,— Do we not place it in our children's hands, Leading young Hope through Lemuel's fabled lands?— God's and man's libel in that foul Yahoo!— Well, and what mischief can the libel do? O impotence of Genius to belie Its glorious task—its mission from the sky! Swift wrote this book to wreak a ribald scorn On aught the Man should love or Priest should mourn— And lo! the book, from all its ends beguiled, A harmless wonder to some happy child!

IV

All books grow homilies by time; they are

Temples, at once, and Landmarks. In them, we

Who but for them, upon that inch of ground We call 'The Present', from the cell could see. No daylight trembling on the dungeon bar, Turn, as we list, the globe's great axle round! And feel the Near less household than the Far! Traverse all space, and number every star. There is no Past, so long as Books shall live! A disinterred Pompeii wakes again For him who seeks you well; lost cities give Up their untarnished wonders, and the reign Of Jove revives and Saturn:—at our will Rise dome and tower on Delphi's sacred hill; Bloom Cimon's trees in Academe;—along Leucadia's headland, sighs the Lesbian's song; With Egypt's Queen once more we sail the Nile, And learn how worlds are bartered for a smile:— Rise up, ye walls, with gardens blooming o'er, Ope but that page—lo, Babylon once more!

V

Ye make the Past our heritage and home:

And is this all? No; by each prophet sage—

No; by the herald souls that Greece and Rome

Sent forth, like hymns, to greet the Morning Star

That rose on Bethlehem—by thy golden page,

Melodious Plato—by thy solemn dreams,

World-wearied Tully!—and, above ye all,

By This, the Everlasting Monument

Of God to mortals, on whose front the beams

Flash glory-breathing day—our lights ye are

To the dark Bourne beyond; in you are sent

The types of Truths whose life is The To-Come;

In you soars up the Adam from the fall;

In you the Future as the Past is given—

Even in our death ye bid us hail our birth;—

Unfold these pages, and behold the Heaven,

Without one gravestone left upon the Earth.

E. G. E. L. Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton.