Comparison of Texts of 1860 and 1867 Editions
Part II, Canto IV
1860
Verse I Sole fountain of song, and the sole source of such lays As Time cannot quench in the dust of his days, Muse or Spirit, that inspirest, since Nature began The great epic of Life, the deep drama of Man! What matter though skilless the lay be, and rude, Or melodiously moving the pure Doric mood, If one ray from thy presence, informing his song, Should descend on the singer, and lift him along? From the prattle of pedants, the babble of fools, From the falsehoods and forms of conventional schools, First and last unappealable arbitress, thou! Whose throne is no more on the crest-cloven brow Of Parnassus, where first out of Phocis was roll'd, From the Heliconiades singing nine-fold, The song which the blind son of Moeon set free, But deep in the heart of mankind, unto thee, Mother Nature, that badest me sing what I fee, And canst feel what I sing, unto thee I appeal! For the Poets pour wine; and, when 'tis new, all decry it; But, once let it be old, every trifler must try it. And Polonius, who praises no wine that's not Massic, Complains of my verse, that my verse is not classic: And the erudite ladies who take, now and then, Tea and toast, with aesthetics, precisely at Ten, Have avouch'd that my song is not earnest because Model schools, lodging-houses for paupers, poor laws, The progress of woman, the great working classes, All the age is concern'd in, unnoticed it passes. And Miss Tilburina, who sings, and not badly My earlier verses, sighs "Commonplace sadly!" Tell them, tell them, my song is as old as 'tis new, And aver that 'tis earnest because it is true. Strip from Fashion the garment she wears: what remains But the old human heart, with its joys and its pains? The progress of woman, the great working classes, All the age is concern'd in, unnoticed it passes. The same drama that drew to its hopes and its fears From the eyes of our fathers both laughter and tears. 'Twas conceived in the heart of the first man on earth, By the rivers of Eden when, lone from his birth, Through the bowers of Paradise wandering forlorn, He pined for the face of an Eve yet unborn: It was acted in Egypt, when Pharaoh was king; It was spoken in Attic, and sung to the string Of the cithern in Greece; and in Rome, word for word, It was utter'd by Horace in accents long heard. Love and grief, strength and weakness, regret and desire, These have breath'd in all ages from every lyre, The chant of man's heart, with its ceaseless endeavour; As old as the song which the sea sings for ever. Other men, other manners! anon from the North, With the Hun and the Vandal, unchanged it roll'd forth. New in language alone, it was hymn'd to the harp Harold bore by the Baltic; its music fell sharp With the sword of the Guiscard; it made Ruldel's weeping Melodious for Melisanth; still is it keeping In play the perpetual pulses of passion In the heart of mankind; and whatever the fashion Of the garments we wear, 'tis the same life they cover. When the Greek actor, acting Electra, wept over 'The urn of Orestes, the theatre rose And wept with him. What was there in such fictive woes. To thrill a whole theatre? Ah, 'tis his son That lies dead in the urn he is weeping upon! 'Tis no fabled Electra that hangs o'er that urn, 'Tis a father that weeps his own child. --------------------------Men discern The man through the mask; the heart moved by the heart. Owns the pathos of life in the pathos of art. And the heart is the sole grand republic, in which All that's human is equal, the poor and the rich: The sole indestructible state, time can touch With no change: before Rome, before Carthage, 'twas such As it will be when London and Paris are gone. Save, indeed, that its citizens (time flowing on) 'Thro' the errors and follies of ages improve The final dominion of absolute love. If this world be, indeed, as 'twas said, but a stage, The dress only is changed 'twixt the acts of an age. From the dark tiring-chamber behind straight reissue With new masks the old mummers; the very same tissue Of passionate antics that move through the play, With new parts to fulfil and new phrases to say. The plot grows more complex, more actors appear, And the moral perchance glimpses out, there and here, More clearly, approaching the ultimate fall Of the curtain that yet hangs unseen. That is all. As for you, O Polonius, you vex me but slightly; But you, Tilburina, your eyes beam so brightly In despite of their languishing looks, on my word, That to see you look cross I can scarcely afford. Yes! the silliest woman that smiles on a bard Better far than Longinus himself can reward The appeal to her feelings of which she approves; And the critics I most care to please are the Loves. Live the gentle romance! live the page torn asunder By a light rosy finger with innocent wonder! Live the tale which Neaera turns over and over In the rose-colour'd room where she dreams of a lover! Live the old melodrama of murder and love Which Jane sobs to see from the box up above! Hang it! women, I know, are vain, frivolous, false. I know they care more for a riband, a waltz, A box at the opera, a new moire antique, Than for science, philosophy, ethics, or Greek. I know they admire, too, a thousand times more Gardoni, or Mario, or even that bore Colonel * * *, whom the deuce only knows what they say to, Than Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Newton, or Plato. I know they are silly, deceitful, and worse: Inconceivably spiteful, self-will'd, and perverse; I know they have weak hearts and obstinate wills; I know that their logic is not Mr. Mill's; I know that their conscience, thank Heaven, is not mine: That they cant about genius, but cannot divine Its existence, till all the world points with the hand; That they wear their creed (even the best), second-hand; That their love's but a plague which in them doth infuse Its contagion from clothes or coin -- no matter whose. And I know that the thing they most care for. . . but no! I'll not say it out loud. Never mind what I know. But despite of all this, and despite of much more, I know I would rather, a hundred times o'er, O Neaera, you exquisite infant, whose duty Is but to be fair, and whose soul is your beauty, Have one smile from your eyes, or one kiss from your lips, One pressure vouchsafed from your fair fingertips, Than to wear all the laurels that ever with praise Impaled human brows - even Dante's brown bays! Alas, friend! what boots it, a stone at his head And a brass on his breast, - when a man is once dead? Ay! were fame the sole guerdon, poor guerdon were then Theirs who, stripping life bare, stand forth models for men. The reformer's? -- a creed by posterity learnt A century after its author is burnt! The poet's -- a laurel that hides the bald brow It hath blighted! The painter's? -- ask Raphael now Which Madonna's authentic! The statesman's? a name For parties to blacken, or boys to declaim! The soldier's? -- three lines on the cold Abbey pavement! Were this all the life of the wise and the brave meant, All it ends in, thrice better, Neaera, it were Unregarded to sport with thine odorous hair, Untroubled to lie at thy feet in the shade And be loved, while the roses yet bloom overhead, Than to sit by the lone hearth, and think the long thought, A severe, sad, blind schoolmaster, envied for nought Save the name of John Milton! For all men, indeed, Who in some choice edition may graciously read, With fair illustration, and erudite note, The song which the poet in bitterness wrote, Beat the poet, and notably beat him, in this - The joy of the genius is theirs, whilst they miss The grief of the man: Tasso's song -- not his madness! Dante's dreams -- not his waking to exile and sadness! Milton's music -- but not Milton's blindness! . . . --------------------------Yet rise, My Milton, and answer, with those noble eyes Which the glory of heaven hath blinded to earth! Say -- the life, in the living it, savours of worth: That the deed, in the doing it, reaches its aim: That the fact has a value apart from the fame: That a deeper delight, in the mere labour, pays Scorn of lesser delights, and laborious days: And Shakespeare, though all Shakespeare's wrltings were lost, And his genius, though never a trace of it cross'd Posterity's path, not the less would have dwelt In the isle with Miranda, with Hamlet have felt All that Hamlet hath utter'd, and haply where, pure On its death-bed, wrong'd Love lay, have moan'd with the Moor! |
1867 Part II, Canto IV |
Last revised: 18 January 2012