Lastly, it is perhaps but the turn of a phrase or the fall of a cadence that touches the heart: So much by way of illustrating poetic effect produced, as only the inspired poet knows how to produce it, by very simple means. I venture to ask the student of Plato to believe with me that the effect produced, in the passages just quoted, by these simple means, does not differ in kind from that produced by the use of elaborate apparatus in the Myths > with which this work is concerned. The effect is always the induction of the dream-consciousness, with its atmosphere of solemn feeling spreading out into the waking consciousness which follows. It will be well, however, not to confine ourselves to the examples given, but to quote some other examples from Poetry, in which this effect is produced in a way more closely parallel to that in which it is produced in the Platonic Myths. I will therefore ask the reader to submit himself to an experiment: first, to take the three following passages - all relating to Death--and carefully reading and re-reading them, allow the effect of them to grow upon him; and then, turning to Plato's Eschatological Myths in the Phaedo, Gorgias, and Republic, and reading them in the same way, to ask himself whether or no he has had a foretaste of their effect in the effect produced by these other pieces. I venture to think that the more we habituate ourselves to the influence of the Poets the better are we likely to receive the message of the Prophets. Deh peregrini, che pensosi andate 1 La Vita Nuova, § 41, Sonetto 24. Per lo suo mezzo la città dolente, E le parole, ch' uom di lei può dire, To that high Capital,1 where Kingly Death He came and bought, with price of purest breath, He will awake no more-oh, never more! Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. Oh, weep for Adonais !-The quick Dreams, But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 1 Shelley, Adonais. Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them; A greater loss with one which was more weak; Another Splendour on his mouth alit, That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. And others came,—Desires and Adorations, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp;-the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. All he had loved and moulded into thought From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, And the wild winds flew around, sobbing in their dismay. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, Than those for whose disdain she pined away Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. * Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep He hath awakened from the dream of life 'Tis we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep And in mad trance strike with our spirit's knife Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; He is made one with Nature: there is heard In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. The splendours of the firmament of time Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Rose pale, his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought, Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: Oblivion, as they rose, shrank like a thing reproved. And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. "Thou art become as one of us," they cry; "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. Assume thy wingèd throne, thou Vesper of our throng!" When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,1 And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring. Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring, Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, 1 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Memories of President Lincoln). |