IX.

Sure you were wishful to speak?

You, with brow ruled like a score,

Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek,

Like two great breves, as they wrote them of yore, Each side that bar, your straight beak!

X.

Sure you said "Good, the mere notes!
Still, couldst thou take my intent,

Know what procured me our Company's votes

A master were lauded and sciolists shent, Parted the sheep from the goats!"

XI.

Well then, speak up, never flinch!
Quick, ere my candle 's a snuff

Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch -
I believe in you, but that 's not enough:
Give my conviction a clinch!

First

XII.

you deliver your phrase
Nothing propound, that I see,

Fit in itself for much blame or much praise-
Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
Off start the Two on their ways.

XIII.

Straight must a Third interpose,
Volunteer needlessly help;

In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
So the cry 's open, the kennel 's a-yelp,
Argument 's hot to the close.

XIV.

One dissertates, he is candid;

Two must discept, — has distinguished

Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did;

Four protests; Five makes a dart at the thing wished: Back to One, goes the case bandied.

XV.

One says his say with a difference;
More of expounding, explaining!

50

60

70

All now is wrangle, abuse and vociferance;

Now there's a truce, all 's subdued, self-restraining: Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.

XVI.

One is incisive, corrosive;

Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant;

Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive;

Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant: Five. O Danaides, O Sieve!

XVII.

Now, they ply axes and crowbars;
Now, they prick pins at a tissue

Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's

Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? Where is our gain at the Two-bars?

Est fuga, volvitur rota.

XVIII.

On we drift: where looms the dim port?

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota ;
Something is gained, if one caught but the import —
Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!

XIX.

What with affirming, denying,

Holding, risposting, subjoining,

All's like

trying

it's like

for an instance I'm

There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining Under those spider-webs lying!

XX.

So your fugue broadens and thickens,
Greatens and deepens and lengthens,

Till we exclaim "But where 's music, the dickens?
Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens
- Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"

XXI.

I for man's effort am zealous :

Prove me such censure unfounded!

80

90

100

Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous

Hopes 't was for something, his organ pipes sounded Tiring three boys at the bellows?

Is it your moral of Life?

XXII.

Such a web, simple and subtle,

Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,

Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, Death ending all with a knife?

XXIII.

Over our heads truth and nature -
Still our life's zigzags and dodges,

Ins and outs, weaving a new legislature

God's gold just shining its last where that lodges, Palled beneath man's usurpature.

XXIV.

So we o'ershroud stars and roses,

Cherub and trophy and garland;

Nothings grow something which quietly closes

Heaven's earnest eye: not a glimpse of the far land Gets thro' our comments and glozes.

XXV.

Ah but traditions, inventions,

(Say we and make up a visage)

So many men with such various intentions,

Down the past ages, must know more than this age! Leave we the web its dimensions!

XXVI.

Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf,
Proved a mere mountain in labour?

Better submit; try again; what's the clef?

'Faith, 't is no trifle for pipe and for tabor Four flats, the minor in F.

XXVII.

Friend, your fugue taxes the finger:
Learning it once, who would lose it?

Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,
Truth's golden o'er us altho' we refuse it
Nature, thro' cobwebs we string her.

XXVIII.

Hugues! I advise meâ pœnâ

(Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon)

Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena!
Say the word, straight I unstop the full-organ,
Blare out the mode Palestrina.

XXIX.

While in the roof, if I 'm right there,
Lo you, the wick in the socket!

Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there!
Down it dips, gone like a rocket.

What, you want, do you, to come unawares,

Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers,
And find a poor devil has ended his cares

At the foot of your rotten-runged rat-riddled stairs?
Do I carry the moon in my pocket?

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION.)

I.

2

LD that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly, - alien of end and of aim,

Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed, Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

II.

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,

This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise! 10 Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,

Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!

And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,

Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.

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III.

bab

And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he
was,

Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,
Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:

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For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, but vivid

When a great illumination surprises a festal night —

dark

Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)

Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in

sight.

had not reached the best for his visio

was enlarged.

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's

birth,

Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;

And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the

earth,

As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine,
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.

V.

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what he

Nay more; for there wanted not who walked in the glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last ;
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed thro' the body and
gone,

But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their

new:

What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;
And what is, shall I say, matched both? for I was made per-
fect too.

VI.

With lines

All thro' my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,
All thro' my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,
All thro' music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth :
Had I written the same, made verse-still, effect proceeds from

cause,

Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;

It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,

Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled :

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