Elizabeth Barrett Browning - A Vision Of Poets lyrics

A poet could not sleep aright, For his soul kept up too much light Under his eyelids for the night. And thus he rose disquieted With sweet rhymes ringing through his head, And in the forest wanderèd Where, sloping up the darkest glades, The moon had drawn long colonnades Upon whose floor the verdure fades To a faint silver: pavement fair, The antique wood-nymphs scarce would dare To foot-print o'er, had such been there, And rather sit by breathlessly, With fear in their large eyes, to see The consecrated sight. But he— The poet who, with spirit-kiss Familiar, had long claimed for his Whatever earthly beauty is, Who also in his spirit bore A beauty pa**ing the earth's store,— Walked calmly onward evermore. His aimless thoughts in metre went, Like a babe's hand without intent Drawn down a seven-stringed instrument: Nor jarred it with his humour as, With a faint stirring of the gra**, An apparition fair did pa**. He might have feared another time, But all things fair and strange did chime With his thoughts then, as rhyme to rhyme. An angel had not startled him, Alighted from heaven's burning rim To breathe from glory in the Dim; Much less a lady riding slow Upon a palfrey white as snow, And smooth as a snow-cloud could go. Full upon his she turned her face, "What ho, sir poet! dost thou pace Our woods at night in ghostly chase "Of some fair Dryad of old tales Who chants between the nightingales And over sleep by song prevails?" She smiled; but he could see arise Her soul from far adown her eyes, Prepared as if for sacrifice. She looked a queen who seemeth gay From royal grace alone. "Now, nay," He answered, "slumber pa**ed away, "Compelled by instincts in my head That I should see to-night, instead Of a fair nymph, some fairer Dread." She looked up quickly to the sky And spake: "The moon's regality Will hear no praise; She is as I. "She is in heaven, and I on earth; This is my kingdom: I come forth To crown all poets to their worth." He brake in with a voice that mourned; "To their worth, lady? They are scorned By men they sing for, till inurned. "To their worth? Beauty in the mind Leaves the hearth cold, and love-refined Ambitions make the world unkind. "The boor who ploughs the daisy down, The chief whose mortgage of renown, Fixed upon graves, has bought a crown— "Both these are happier, more approved Than poets!—why should I be moved In saying, both are more beloved?" "The south can judge not of the north," She resumed calmly; "I come forth To crown all poets to their worth. "Yea, verily, to anoint them all With blessed oils which surely shall Smell sweeter as the ages fall." "As sweet," the poet said, and rung A low sad laugh, "as flowers are, sprung Out of their graves when they die young; "As sweet as window-eglantine, Some bough of which, as they decline, The hired nurse gathers at their sign: "As sweet, in short, as perfumed shroud Which the gay Roman maidens sewed For English Keats, singing aloud." The lady answered, "Yea, as sweet! The things thou namest being complete In fragrance, as I measure it. "Since sweet the d**h-clothes and the knell Of him who having lived, dies well; And wholly sweet the asphodel "Stirred softly by that foot of his, When he treads brave on all that is, Into the world of souls, from this. "Since sweet the tears, dropped at the door Of tearless d**h, and even before: Sweet, consecrated evermore. "What, dost thou judge it a strange thing That poets, crowned for vanquishing, Should bear some dust from out the ring? "Come on with me, come on with me, And learn in coming: let me free Thy spirit into verity." She ceased: her palfrey's paces sent No separate noises as she went; 'Twas a bee's hum, a little spent. And while the poet seemed to tread Along the drowsy noise so made, The forest heaved up overhead Its billowy foliage through the air, And the calm stars did far and spare O'erswim the ma**es everywhere Save when the overtopping pines Did bar their tremulous light with lines All fixed and black. Now the moon shines A broader glory. You may see The trees grow rarer presently; The air blows up more fresh and free: Until they come from dark to light, And from the forest to the sight Of the large heaven-heart, bare with night, A fiery throb in every star, Those burning arteries that are The conduits of God's life afar,— A wild brown moorland underneath, And four pools breaking up the heath With white low gleamings, blank as d**h. Beside the first pool, near the wood, A dead tree in set horror stood, Peeled and disjointed, stark as rood; Since thunder-stricken, years ago, Fixed in the spectral strain and throe Wherewith it struggled from the blow: A monumental tree, alone, That will not bend in storms, nor groan, But break off sudden like a stone. Its lifeless shadow lies oblique Upon the pool where, javelin-like, The star-rays quiver while they strike. "Drink," said the lady, very still— "Be holy and cold." He did her will And drank the starry water chill. The next pool they came near unto Was bare of trees; there, only grew Straight flags, and lilies just a few Which sullen on the water sate And leant their faces on the flat, As weary of the starlight-state. "Drink," said the lady, grave and slow— "World's use behoveth thee to know." He drank the bitter wave below. The third pool, girt with thorny bushes And flaunting weeds and reeds and rushes That winds sang through in mournful gushes, Was whitely smeared in many a round By a slow slime; the starlight swound Over the ghastly light it found. "Drink," said the lady, sad and slow— "World's love behoveth thee to know." He looked to her commanding so; Her brow was troubled, but her eye Struck clear to his soul. For all reply He drank the water suddenly,— Then, with a d**hly sickness, pa**ed Beside the fourth pool and the last, Where weights of shadow were downcast From yew and alder and rank trails Of nightshade clasping the trunk-scales And flung across the intervals From yew to yew: who dares to stoop Where those dank branches overdroop, Into his heart the chill strikes up, He hears a silent gliding coil, The snakes strain hard against the soil, His foot slips in their slimy oil, And toads seem crawling on his hand, And clinging bats but dimly scanned Full in his face their wings expand. A paleness took the poet's cheek: "Must I drink here?" he seemed to seek The lady's will with utterance meek: "Ay, ay," she said, "it so must be;" (And this time she spake cheerfully) "Behoves thee know World's cruelty." He bowed his forehead till his mouth Curved in the wave, and drank unloth As if from rivers of the south; His lips sobbed through the water rank, His heart paused in him while he drank, His brain beat heart-like, rose and sank, And he swooned backward to a dream Wherein he lay 'twixt gloom and gleam, With d**h and Life at each extreme: And spiritual thunders, born of soul Not cloud, did leap from mystic pole And o'er him roll and counter-roll, Crushing their echoes reboant With their own wheels. Did Heaven so grant His spirit a sign of covenant? At last came silence. A slow kiss Did crown his forehead after this; His eyelids flew back for the bliss— The lady stood beside his head, Smiling a thought, with hair dispread; The moonshine seemed dishevellèd In her sleek tresses manifold Like Danaë's in the rain of old That dripped with melancholy gold: But she was holy, pale and high As one who saw an ecstasy Beyond a foretold agony. "Rise up!" said she with voice where song Eddied through speech, "rise up; be strong: And learn how right avenges wrong." The poet rose up on his feet: He stood before an altar set For sacrament with vessels meet And mystic altar-lights which shine As if their flames were crystalline Carved flames that would not shrink or pine. The altar filled the central place Of a great church, and toward its face Long aisles did shoot and interlace, And from it a continuous mist Of incense (round the edges kissed By a yellow light of amethyst) Wound upward slowly and throbbingly, Cloud within cloud, right silverly, Cloud above cloud, victoriously,— Broke full against the archèd roof And thence refracting eddied off And floated through the marble woof Of many a fine-wrought architrave, Then, poising its white ma**es brave, Swept solemnly down aisle and nave Where, now in dark and now in light, The countless columns, glimmering white, Seemed leading out to the Infinite: Plunged halfway up the shaft, they showed In that pale shifting incense-cloud Which flowed them by and overflowed Till mist and marble seemed to blend And the whole temple, at the end, With its own incense to distend,— The arches like a giant's bow To bend and slacken,—and below, The nichèd saints to come and go: Alone amid the shifting scene That central altar stood serene In its clear steadfast taper-sheen. Then first, the poet was aware Of a chief angel standing there Before that altar, in the glare. His eyes were dreadful, for you saw That they saw God; his lips and jaw Grand-made and strong, as Sinai's law They could enunciate and refrain From vibratory after-pain, And his brow's height was sovereign: On the vast background of his wings Rises his image, and he flings From each plumed arc pale glitterings And fiery flakes (as beateth, more Or less, the angel-heart) before And round him upon roof and floor, Edging with fire the shifting fumes, While at his side 'twixt lights and glooms The phantasm of an organ booms. Extending from which instrument And angel, right and left-way bent, The poet's sight grew sentient Of a strange company around And toward the altar, pale and bound With bay above the eyes profound. d**hful their faces were, and yet The power of life was in them set— Never forgot nor to forget: Sublime significance of mouth, Dilated nostril full of youth, And forehead royal with the truth. These faces were not multiplied Beyond your count, but side by side Did front the altar, glorified, Still as a vision, yet exprest Full as an action—look and geste Of buried saint in risen rest. The poet knew them. Faint and dim His spirits seemed to sink in him— Then, like a dolphin, change and swim The current: these were poets true, Who died for Beauty as martyrs do For Truth—the ends being scarcely two. God's prophets of the Beautiful These poets were; of iron rule, The rugged cilix, serge of wool. Here Homer, with the broad suspense Of thunderous brows, and lips intense Of garrulous god-innocence. There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world: O eyes sublime With tears and laughters for all time! Here Æschylus, the women swooned To see so awful when he frowned As the gods did: he standeth crowned. Euripides, with close and mild Scholastic lips, that could be wild And laugh or sob out like a child Even in the cla**es. Sophocles, With that king's-look which down the trees Followed the dark effigies Of the lost Theban. Hesiod old, Who, somewhat blind and deaf and cold, Cared most for gods and bulls. And bold Electric Pindar, quick as fear, With race-dust on his cheeks, and clear Slant startled eyes that seem to hear The chariot rounding the last goal, To hurtle past it in his soul. And Sappho, with that gloriole Of ebon hair on calmèd brows— O poet-woman! none forgoes The leap, attaining the repose. Theocritus, with glittering locks Dropt sideway, as betwixt the rocks He watched the visionary flocks. And Aristophanes, who took The world with mirth, and laughter-struck The hollow caves of Thought and woke The infinite echoes hid in each. And Virgil: shade of Mantuan beech Did help the shade of bay to reach And knit around his forehead high: For his gods wore less majesty Than his brown bees hummed d**hlessly. Lucretius, nobler than his mood, Who dropped his plummet down the broad Deep universe and said "No God—" Finding no bottom: he denied Divinely the divine, and died Chief poet on the Tiber-side By grace of God: 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 engenderèd) 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 shield. 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**o, 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 d**h'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 entity. 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 God 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**ionings Set in his eyes: deep lyric springs Are of the fire-mount's issuings. And Shelley, 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. These poets faced (and many more) The lighted altar looming o'er The clouds of incense dim and hoar: And all their faces, in the lull Of natural things, looked wonderful With life and d**h and d**hless rule. All, still as stone and yet intense; As if by spirit's vehemence That stone were carved and not by sense. But where the heart of each should beat, There seemed a wound instead of it, From whence the blood dropped to their feet Drop after drop—dropped heavily As century follows century Into the deep eternity. Then said the lady—and her word Came distant, as wide waves were stirred Between her and the ear that heard,— "World's use is cold, world's love is vain, World's cruelty is bitter bane, But pain is not the fruit of pain. "Hearken, O poet, whom I led From the dark wood: dismissing dread, Now hear this angel in my stead. "His organ's clavier strikes along These poets' hearts, sonorous, strong, They gave him without count of wrong,— "A diapason whence to guide Up to God's feet, from these who died, An anthem fully glorified— "Whereat God's blessing, Ibarak (=yivarech=) Breathes back this music, folds it back About the earth in vapoury rack, "And men walk in it, crying 'Lo The world is wider, and we know The very heavens look brighter so: "'The stars move statelier round the edge Of the silver spheres, and give in pledge Their light for nobler privilege: "'No little flower but joys or grieves, Full life is rustling in the sheaves, Full spirit sweeps the forest-leaves.' "So works this music on the earth, God so admits it, sends it forth To add another worth to worth— "A new creation-bloom that rounds The old creation and expounds His Beautiful in tuneful sounds. "Now hearken!" Then the poet gazed Upon the angel glorious-faced Whose hand, majestically raised, Floated across the organ-keys, Like a pale moon o'er murmuring seas, With no touch but with influences: Then rose and fell (with swell and swound Of shapeless noises wandering round A concord which at last they found) Those mystic keys: the tones were mixed, Dim, faint, and thrilled and throbbed betwixt The incomplete and the unfixed: And therein mighty minds were heard In mighty musings, inly stirred, And struggling outward for a word: Until these surges, having run This way and that, gave out as one An Aphroditè of sweet tune, A Harmony that, finding vent, Upward in grand ascension went, Winged to a heavenly argument, Up, upward like a saint who strips The shroud back from his eyes and lips, And rises in apocalypse: A harmony sublime and plain, Which cleft (as flying swan, the rain,— Throwing the drops off with a strain Of her white wing) those undertones Of perplext chords, and soared at once And struck out from the starry thrones Their several silver octaves as It pa**ed to God. The music was Of divine stature; strong to pa**: And those who heard it, understood Something of life in spirit and blood, Something of nature's fair and good: And while it sounded, those great souls Did thrill as racers at the goals And burn in all their aureoles; But she the lady, as vapour-bound, Stood calmly in the joy of sound, Like Nature with the showers around: And when it ceased, the blood which fell Again, alone grew audible, Tolling the silence as a bell. The sovran angel lifted high His hand, and spake out sovranly: "Tried poets, hearken and reply! "Give me true answers. If we grant That not to suffer, is to want The conscience of the jubilant,— "If ignorance of anguish is But ignorance, and mortals miss Far prospects, by a level bliss,— "If, as two colours must be viewed In a visible image, mortals should Need good and evil, to see good,— "If to speak nobly, comprehends To feel profoundly,—if the ends Of power and suffering, Nature blends,— "If poets on the tripod must Writhe like the Pythian to make just Their oracles and merit trust,— "If every vatic word that sweeps To change the world must pale their lips And leave their own souls in eclipse,— "If to search deep the universe Must pierce the searcher with the curse, Because that bolt (in man's reverse) "Was shot to the heart o' the wood and lies Wedged deepest in the best,—if eyes That look for visions and surprise "From influent angels, must shut down Their eyelids first to sun and moon, The head asleep upon a stone,— "If One who did redeem you back, By His own loss, from final wrack, Did consecrate by touch and track "Those temporal sorrows till the taste Of brackish waters of the waste Is salt with tears He dropt too fast,— "If all the crowns of earth must wound With prickings of the thorns He found,— If saddest sighs swell sweetest sound,— "What say ye unto this?—refuse This baptism in salt water?—choose Calm breasts, mute lips, and labour loose? "Or, O ye gifted givers! ye Who give your liberal hearts to me To make the world this harmony, "Are ye resigned that they be spent To such world's help?"The Spirits bent Their awful brows and said "Content." Content! it sounded like Amen Said by a choir of mourning men; An affirmation full of pain And patience,—ay, of glorying And adoration, as a king Might seal an oath for governing. Then said the angel—and his face Lightened abroad until the place Grew larger for a moment's space,— The long aisles flashing out in light, And nave and transept, columns white And arches crossed, being clear to sight As if the roof were off and all Stood in the noon-sun,—"Lo, I call To other hearts as liberal. "This pedal strikes out in the air: My instrument has room to bear Still fuller strains and perfecter. "Herein is room, and shall be room While Time lasts, for new hearts to come Consummating while they consume. "What living man will bring a gift Of his own heart and help to lift The tune?—The race is to the swift." So asked the angel. Straight the while, A company came up the aisle With measured step and sorted smile; Cleaving the incense-clouds that rise, With winking unaccustomed eyes And love-locks smelling sweet of spice. One bore his head above the rest As if the world were dispossessed, And one did pillow chin on breast, Right languid, an as he should faint; One shook his curls across his paint And moralized on worldly taint; One, slanting up his face, did wink The salt rheum to the eyelid's brink, To think—O gods! or—not to think. Some trod out stealthily and slow, As if the sun would fall in snow If they walked to instead of fro; And some, with conscious ambling free, Did shake their bells right daintily On hand and foot, for harmony; And some, composing sudden sighs In attitudes of point-device, Rehearsed impromptu agonies. And when this company drew near The spirits crowned, it might appear Submitted to a ghastly fear; As a sane eye in master-pa**ion Constrains a maniac to the fashion Of hideous maniac imitation In the least geste—the dropping low O' the lid, the wrinkling of the brow, Exaggerate with mock and mow,— So mastered was that company By the crowned vision utterly, Swayed to a maniac mockery. One dulled his eyeballs, as they ached With Homer's forehead, though he lacked An inch of any; and one racked His lower lip with restless tooth, As Pindar's rushing words forsooth Were pent behind it; one his smooth Pink cheeks did rumple pa**ionate Like Æschylus, and tried to prate On trolling tongue of fate and fate; One set her eyes like Sappho's—or Any light woman's; one forbore Like Dante, or any man as poor In mirth, to let a smile undo His hard-shut lips; and one that drew Sour humours from his mother, blew His sunken cheeks out to the size Of most unnatural jollities, Because Anacreon looked jest-wise; So with the rest: it was a sight A great world-laughter would requite, Or great world-wrath, with equal right Out came a speaker from that crowd To speak for all, in sleek and proud Exordial periods, while he bowed His knee before the angel—"Thus, O angel who hast called for us, We bring thee service emulous, "Fit service from sufficient soul, Hand-service to receive world's dole, Lip-service in world's ear to roll "Adjusted concords soft enow To hear the wine-cups pa**ing, through, And not too grave to spoil the show: "Thou, certes, when thou askest more, O sapient angel, leanest o'er The window-sill of metaphor. "To give our hearts up? fie! that rage Barbaric antedates the age; It is not done on any stage. "Because your scald or gleeman went With seven or nine-stringed instrument Upon his back,—must ours be bent? "We are not pilgrims, by your leave; No, nor yet martyrs; if we grieve, It is to rhyme to—summer eve: "And if we labour, it shall be As suiteth best with our degree, In after-dinner reverie." More yet that speaker would have said, Poising between his smiles fair-fed Each separate phrase till finishèd; But all the foreheads of those born And dead true poets flashed with scorn Betwixt the bay leaves round them worn, Ay, jetted such brave fire that they, The new-come, shrank and paled away Like leaden ashes when the day Strikes on the hearth. A spirit-blast, A presence known by power, at last Took them up mutely: they had pa**ed. And he our pilgrim-poet saw Only their places, in deep awe, What time the angel's smile did draw His gazing upward. Smiling on, The angel in the angel shone, Revealing glory in benison; Till, ripened in the light which shut The poet in, his spirit mute Dropped sudden as a perfect fruit; He fell before the angel's feet, Saying, "If what is true is sweet, In something I may compa** it: "For, where my worthiness is poor, My will stands richly at the door To pay shortcomings evermore. "Accept me therefore: not for price And not for pride my sacrifice Is tendered, for my soul is nice "And will beat down those dusty seeds Of bearded corn if she succeeds In soaring while the covey feeds. "I soar, I am drawn up like the lark To its white cloud—so high my mark, Albeit my wing is small and dark. "I ask no wages, seek no fame: Sew me, for shroud round face and name, God's banner of the oriflamme. "I only would have leave to loose (In tears and blood if so He choose) Mine inward music out to use: "I only would be spent—in pain And loss, perchance, but not in vain— Upon the sweetness of that strain; "Only project beyond the bound Of mine own life, so lost and found, My voice, and live on in its sound; "Only embrace and be embraced By fiery ends, whereby to waste, And light God's future with my past." The angel's smile grew more divine, The mortal speaking; ay, its shine Swelled fuller, like a choir-note fine, Till the broad glory round his brow Did vibrate with the light below; But what he said I do not know. Nor know I if the man who prayed, Rose up accepted, unforbade, From the church-floor where he was laid,— Nor if a listening life did run Through the king-poets, one by one Rejoicing in a worthy son: My soul, which might have seen, grew blind By what it looked on: I can find No certain count of things behind. I saw alone, dim, white and grand As in a dream, the angel's hand Stretched forth in gesture of command Straight through the haze. And so, as erst, A strain more noble than the first Mused in the organ, and outburst: With giant march from floor to roof Rose the full notes, now parted off In pauses ma**ively aloof Like measured thunders, now rejoined In concords of mysterious kind Which fused together sense and mind, Now flashing sharp on sharp along Exultant in a mounting throng, Now dying off to a low song Fed upon minors, wavelike sounds Re-eddying into silver rounds, Enlarging liberty with bounds: And every rhythm that seemed to close Survived in confluent underflows Symphonious with the next that rose. Thus the whole strain being multiplied And greatened, with its glorified Wings shot abroad from side to side, Waved backward (as a wind might wave A Brocken mist and with as brave Wild roaring) arch and architrave, Aisle, transept, column, marble wall,— Then swelling outward, prodigal Of aspiration beyond thrall, Soared, and drew up with it the whole Of this said vision, as a soul Is raised by a thought. And as a scroll Of bright devices is unrolled Still upward with a gradual gold, So rose the vision manifold, Angel and organ, and the round Of spirits, solemnized and crowned; While the freed clouds of incense wound Ascending, following in their track, And glimmering faintly like the rack O' the moon in her own light cast back. And as that solemn dream withdrew, The lady's kiss did fall anew Cold on the poet's brow as dew. And that same kiss which bound him first Beyond the senses, now reversed Its own law and most subtly pierced His spirit with the sense of things Sensual and present. Vanishings Of glory with Æolian wings Struck him and pa**ed: the lady's face Did melt back in the chrysopras Of the orient morning sky that was Yet clear of lark and there and so She melted as a star might do, Still smiling as she melted slow: Smiling so slow, he seemed to see Her smile the last thing, gloriously Beyond her, far as memory. Then he looked round: he was alone. He lay before the breaking sun, As Jacob at the Bethel stone. And thought's entangled skein being wound, He knew the moorland of his swound, And the pale pools that smeared the ground; The far wood-pines like offing ships; The fourth pool's yew anear him drips, World's cruelty attaints his lips, And still he tastes it, bitter still; Through all that glorious possible He had the sight of present ill. Yet rising calmly up and slowly With such a cheer as scorneth folly, A mild delightsome melancholy, He journeyed homeward through the wood And prayed along the solitude Betwixt the pines, "O God, my God!" The golden morning's open flowings Did sway the trees to murmurous bowings, In metric chant of blessed poems. And pa**ing homeward through the wood, He prayed along the solitude, "Thou, Poet-God, art great and good! "And though we must have, and have had Right reason to be earthly sad, Thou, Poet-God, art great and glad!"