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Doth Art, enshrined in artificial forms,

Sit like a queen, and scatter round her charms ;
But in our life of toils, and pains, and loves,

Around our earthly atmosphere it moves.—
Where'er the mourner weeps above the corse,

While stifled grief makes utterance, choked and hoarse;
Where'er the maiden's listening ear awaits

The loved one's footsteps at the garden gates;
Where through the veins the sense of loving stirs,
And fuses all this solid universe;

Where, still pursuing as the phantom flies,

Childhood hunts pleasure through its paradise ;
Where, like the gnawing vulture, day by day,
Pain eats the better part of life away;

Where blind desire, born in the sweet abstract,
Beats its mad wings against the sullen fact;
Where they, whose longings up to heaven would fly,
Rot in the toilsome slime of poverty;

In every struggle for the truth it strives;

In every brave heroic deed it lives;

In every joy it singeth like a bird;

In every grief its secret sob is heard.

To give a voice to every varying hue;

All passion unto Beauty to subdue ;

To make eternal by a touch of power

The chance-grown product of the fleeting hour;
To prison in a web of subtle words

Prismatic lights, and evanescent gleams;
On the deep basses of harmonious chords
To build an undecaying world of dreams ;
Upon the lifeless canvass to impress

All forms, all tints, all lines of loveliness,
And to compel the solid stone to yield
The Idea's image in its breast concealed;
Such is the aim of Art; and to obey
Its high behest is not an idle play ;
For never yet its golden prize was won
By blowing painted bubbles in the sun.
It asks the willing toil of earnest years,
Companioned by its secret hopes and fears,
Born of desire, baptized by burning tears.

Ye are deceived who dream his perfect powers Untrained, unguided, blossom forth like flowers; Who deem his life is but a gay parade, By joys escorted through a rosy glade ; No! he hath never won who never fought; By toil and will alone is greatness wrought,

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The wing onging Earn tamer supply.

The dogging thought, that mainly sees me sy,
The darkening sense, that borders on fespair.
The Stat fallure poisoning all the air,

The laboring hours success hath never biest,

The anxiong doubt, that gaws the care-worn breast, The secret fear, that jars the unnerved mind,

As wane fine lyre is riven by the wind. —

These are the panga, that rack the nice-strung sense; But Genius is its own great recompense,

And though a wildfire burn within its veins,

For other joys it would not change its pains.
The child of Nature, for his wondering eyes
She lifts the veil from off her mysteries ;
His voice to hers in clear accordance rings;
Her beauty is the air in which he sings;
She wreathes his fancy with its fairest hues ;
With visionary dreams her heart he woos;

She breathes in music as he wanders by;

She bids the world be picture for his eye;
For him her bounteous arms are open thrown,
Her secrets yielded unto him alone;

While he within her meanest shape perceives
The lingering glory, that God's finger leaves;
And as the Ocean's faint and muffled swell
Haunts with perpetual voice the hollow shell,
So to his inward ear the world around

Is as a shell, in whose fine labyrinths sound

The murmurs of a dim and distant sea,

The secret promise of futurity.

Still the fair promise towers above the fact,

And Hope's great vision dwarfs the accomplished act.
No mortal hand within its art hath wrought

The perfect semblance of the unbodied thought;
Bright as its reflex seem in art exprest,

It shone more bright unfashioned in the breast;

The sweet mirage, through which its image loomed,
The vague desire, whose coloring it assumed,
Seem but memorial twilight dimly fair,

Left by a sunken sun to haunt the air.
Whate'er we do is less than what we are;
Where'er we move, the horizon is as far;

With the sure feet of fate pursue his way,
Urge him till he their ceaseless call obey,
Till Art, with spirit hopeful as the morn,
The child of Nature and the Soul is born.

Thus struggling on, the artist seeks to find
The charm, that marries matter unto mind.
With his own life the world of sense he warms,
And Nature to his passion he transforms;
To him her shape is ever fresh and young,
New music lives forever on her tongue,
With every change she weaves a magic spell,
And daily works an endless miracle.

Knit thus together by a secret bond,

The spirit unto Nature must respond,

For some strange spell unites them at our birth,

And shapes us half from heaven, and half from earth.

Though Custom blur the sense, and dim the eye,

And blot out beauty from the common sky,
All from its wretched slavery breaking loose
At times will burst the bondage of its use,
And free in thought respond to Nature's tone,
And feel her throbbing heart against their own.

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