I.
LETTER FROM LORD ALFRED VARGRAVE TO THE COMTESSE DE NEVERS.
BIGORRE, TUESDAY.
"Your note, Madam, reach'd me to-day, at Bigorre, And commands (need I add?) my obedience. Before The night I shall be at Luchon--where a line, If sent to Duval's, the hotel where I dine, Will find me, awaiting your orders. Receive My respects.
"Yours sincerely, "A. VARGRAVE.
"I leave In an hour."
II.
In an hour from the time he wrote this Alfred Vargrave, in tracking a mountain abyss, Gave the rein to his steed and his thoughts, and pursued, In pursuing his course through the blue solitude, The reflections that journey gave rise to.
And (Because, without some such precaution, I fear You might fail to distinguish, them each from the rest Of the world they belong to; whose captives are drest, As our convicts, precisely the same one and all, While the coat cut for Peter is pass'd on to Paul)
I resolve, one by one, when I pick from the mass The persons I want, as before you they pass, To label them broadly in plain black and white On the backs of them. Therefore whilst yet he's in sight, I first label my hero.
III.
The age is gone o'er When a man may in all things be all. We have more Painters, poets, musicians, and artists, no doubt, Than the great Cinquecento gave birth to; but out Of a million of mere dilettanti, when, when Will a new LEONARDO arise on our ken?
He is gone with the age which begat him. Our own Is too vast, and too complex, for one man alone To embody its purpose, and hold it shut close In the palm of his hand. There were giants in those Irreclaimable days; but in these days of ours, In dividing the work, we distribute the powers.
Yet a dwarf on a dead giant's shoulders sees more Than the 'live giant's eyesight availed to explore;
And in life's lengthen'd alphabet what used to be To our sires X Y Z is to us A B C.
A Vanini is roasted alive for his pains, But a Bacon comes after and picks up his brains.
A Bruno is angrily seized by the throttle And hunted about by thy ghost, Aristotle, Till a More or Lavater step into his place:
Then the world turns and makes an admiring grimace.
Once the men were so great and so few, they appear, Through a distant Olympian atmosphere, Like vast Caryatids upholding the age.
Now the men are so many and small, disengage One man from the million to mark him, next moment The crowd sweeps him hurriedly out of your comment;
And since we seek vainly (to praise in our songs)
'Mid our fellows the size which to heroes belongs, We take the whole age for a hero, in want Of a better; and still, in its favor, descant On the strength and the beauty which, failing to find In any one man, we ascribe to mankind.
IV.
Alfred Vargrave was one of those men who achieve So little, because of the much they conceive:
With irresolute finger he knock'd at each one Of the doorways of life, and abided in none.
His course, by each star that would cross it, was set, And whatever he did he was sure to regret.
That target, discuss'd by the travellers of old, Which to one appear'd argent, to one appear'd gold, To him, ever lingering on Doubt's dizzy margent, Appear'd in one moment both golden and argent.
The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one, May hope to achieve it before life be done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes, Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows A harvest of barren regrets. And the worm That crawls on in the dust to the definite term Of its creeping existence, and sees nothing more Than the path it pursues till its creeping be o'er, In its limited vision, is happier far Than the Half-Sage, whose course, fix'd by no friendly star Is by each star distracted in turn, and who knows Each will still be as distant wherever he goes.
V.
Both brilliant and brittle, both bold and unstable, Indecisive yet keen, Alfred Vargrave seem'd able To dazzle, but not to illumine mankind.
A vigorous, various, versatile mind;
A character wavering, fitful, uncertain, As the shadow that shakes o'er a luminous curtain, Vague, flitting, but on it forever impressing The shape of some substance at which you stand guessing:
When you said, "All is worthless and weak here," behold!
Into sight on a sudden there seem'd to unfold Great outlines of strenuous truth in the man:
When you said, "This is genius," the outlines grew wan, And his life, though in all things so gifted and skill'd, Was, at best, but a promise which nothing fulfill'd.
VI.
In the budding of youth, ere wild winds can deflower The shut leaves of man's life, round the germ of his power Yet folded, his life had been earnest. Alas!
In that life one occasion, one moment, there was When this earnestness might, with the life-sap of youth, Lusty fruitage have borne in his manhood's full growth;
But it found him too soon, when his nature was still The delicate toy of too pliant a will, The boisterous wind of the world to resist, Or the frost of the world's wintry wisdom.
He miss'd That occasion, too rathe in its advent.
Since then, He had made it a law, in his commerce with men, That intensity in him, which only left sore The heart it disturb'd, to repel and ignore.
And thus, as some Prince by his subjects deposed, Whose strength he, by seeking to crush it, disclosed, In resigning the power he lack'd power to support Turns his back upon courts, with a sneer at the court, In his converse this man for self-comfort appeal'd To a cynic denial of all he conceal'd In the instincts and feelings belied by his words.
Words, however, are things: and the man who accords To his language the license to outrage his soul, Is controll'd by the words he disdains to control.
And, therefore, he seem'd in the deeds of each day The light code proclaim'd on his lips to obey;
And, the slave of each whim, follow'd wilfully aught That perchance fool'd the fancy, or flatter'd the thought.
Yet, indeed, deep within him, the spirits of truth, Vast, vague aspirations, the powers of his youth, Lived and breathed, and made moan--stirr'd themselves--strove to start Into deeds--though deposed, in that Hades, his heart.
