| TRUTH, so far, in my book;—the truth which draws | |
| Through all things upwards,—that a twofold world | |
| Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things | |
| And spiritual,—who separates those two | |
| In art, in morals, or the social drift | 5 |
| Tears up the bond of nature and brings death, | |
| Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, | |
| Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, | |
| Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divide | |
| This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,— | 10 |
| The perfect round which fitted Venus’ hand | |
| Has perished as utterly as if we ate | |
| Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe, | |
| The natural’s impossible,—no form, | |
| No motion: without sensuous, spiritual | 15 |
| Is inappreciable,—no beauty or power: | |
| And in this twofold sphere the twofold man | |
| (For still the artist is intensely a man) | |
| Holds firmly by the natural, to reach | |
| The spiritual beyond it,—fixes still | 20 |
| The type with mortal vision, to pierce through, | |
| With eyes immortal, to the antetype | |
| Some call the ideal,—better call the real, | |
| And certain to be called so presently | |
| When things shall have their names. Look long enough | 25 |
| On any peasant’s face here, coarse and lined, | |
| You’ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay, | |
| As perfect featured as he yearns at Rome | |
| From marble pale with beauty; then persist, | |
| And, if your apprehension’s competent, | 30 |
| You’ll find some fairer angel at his back, | |
| As much exceeding him as he the boor, | |
| And pushing him with empyreal disdain | |
| For ever out of sight. Aye, Carrington | |
| Is glad of such a creed: an artist must, | 35 |
| Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone | |
| With just his hand, and finds it suddenly | |
| A-piece with and conterminous to his soul. | |
| Why else do these things move him, leaf, or stone? | |
| The bird’s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot; | 40 |
| Nor yet the horse, before a quarry, a-graze: | |
| But man, the twofold creature, apprehends | |
| The twofold manner, in and outwardly, | |
| And nothing in the world comes single to him, | |
| A mere itself,—cup, column, or candlestick, | 45 |
| All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; | |
| The whole temporal show related royally, | |
| And built up to eterne significance | |
| Through the open arms of God. ‘There’s nothing great | |
| Nor small’, has said a poet of our day, | 50 |
| Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve | |
| And not be thrown out by the matin’s bell: | |
| And truly, I reiterate, nothing’s small! | |
| No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee, | |
| But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; | 55 |
| No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere; | |
| No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim; | |
| And (glancing on my own thin, veinèd wrist), | |
| In such a little tremor of the blood | |
| The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul | 60 |
| Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven, | |
| And every common bush afire with God; | |
| But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, | |
| The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries, | |
| And daub their natural faces unaware | 65 |
| More and more from the first similitude. | |
