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Title: Pygmalion
Author: Walter R. Cassels [
More Titles by Cassels]
PART I.
THE MAN.
In the blue AEgean is Cyprus,
Set in the midst of the waters
Like a starry isle in the ocean of heaven.
The waters ripple around it
With soft and luminous motion,
Strewing the silvery sands
With shells amaranthine, and flowers
Borne from amid the white coral stems,
Like off'rings of peace from the ocean.
Amid it riseth Olympus,[A]
Stately and grand as the throne of the gods,
And the island sleeps 'neath its shadow
Like a fair babe 'neath the care of its father.
Streams clear as the diamond
Evermore wander around it,
Like the vein'd tide through our members,
Quick with the blessings of beauty,
And health and verdurous pleasure,
Filling with yellow sheaves
And plenty the bosom of Ceres;
Calling forth flowers from the slumbering Earth,
Like thoughts from the dream of a Poet,
Till the island throughout is a garden,
The child and the plaything of summer.
_[Footnote A: The principal mountain of Cyprus was thus named.]
In luscious clusters the fruit hangs
In the sunshine, melting away
From sweetness to sweetness.
The grapes clust'ring 'mid leaves,
That give their bright hue to the eye
Like the setting of rubies.
The nectarines and the pomegranates
Glowing with crimson ripeness,
And the orange trees with their blossoms
Yielding sweet odour to every breeze,
As the incense flows from the censer.
The air is languid with pleasure and love,
Lulling the sense to dreams Elysian,
Making life seem a glorious trance,
Full of bright visions of heaven,
Safe from the touch of reality,
Toil none--woe none--pain,
Wild and illusive as sleep-revelations.
Time to be poured like wine from a chalice
Sparkling and joyous for aye,
Drained amid mirth and music,
The brows circled with ivy,
And the goblet at last like a gift
Thrust in the bosom of slumber.
Thus are the people of Cyprus;
Young men and old making holiday,
Decking them daintily forth
In robes of Sidonian purple:
The maidens all beauteous but wanton,
Foolishly flinging youth's gifts,
Its jewels--its richest adornment,
Like dross on the altar of pleasure;
Letting the worm of mortality
Eat out their hearts till they bear
Only the semblance of angels.
Amongst them like a gaunt and gnarled oak
Waving majestic o'er a pigmy race,
Pygmalion was; for by the mete of soul
Man ranges in the phalanx of his age.
His heart was like an ocean, tremulous
With radiant aspirations and high thoughts
That fretted ever on mortality,
Wearing life out with passion and desire,
Struggling against the limits of the flesh,
The bonds and shackles of the Possible,
That bound him, like Prometheus, to the dust,
And clogg'd the upward winging of his soul.
He walk'd 'mongst men like one who felt the strength
Of nobler nature swelling in his breast,
Eternal breathings fanning the Divine
Within him into flame and utterance.
He spake not much, for that his heaving thoughts
Yearn'd vainly for the living fire of heaven
To burn them through the soul-core of the Time;
But in the inner man the tumult sped
In burning currents, like the ruddy streams
From every pulse-beat of his o'er-fraught heart.
His soul hung in an atmosphere of grace,
And beauty, midway betwixt earth and heaven,
Revolving, like the moon through azure space,
Mid starry fancies and faint orbed dreams,
That made bright land-marks in the spirit's flight.
Faint glimmerings of loveliness untold
Flash'd ever on him in his solitudes,
Luring him on to search and far pursuit
Through empyrean altitudes of thought,
Sped onward by the god-like thirst to grasp
The spiritual, and with creative hand
Mould it to corporal reality.
Love was his guiding star--his bright ideal
Shining above all visions and all dreams,
As doth the Pole-star o'er the icy North;
Love in its broad and fineless empery
Ruling, directing all by right divine,
Pressing its seal of vassalage on thought,
And crushing passion with relentless heel;
Love--the refiner, whose alchymic art
Transmuteth very dross to purest gold,
Passing emotion through the furnace heat
That scorcheth up its perishable frame,
And yields the essence purified for Act.
The soul that wanders like the mission'd dove
Along the chaos waste of boundless thought,
Must have some ark to nestle in on Earth,
And shelter from the endless Undefined.
So to Eve's daughters would Pygmalion seek,
Won by sweet hopes and promises of good
And beauty, such as emblem'd to him still
The end accomplish'd of aspiring thirst--
Essence and grace materialized. In them
He saw the sum of Nature's perfectness,
The acme of idealism reach'd:
Fair forms, smooth with the ruddy glow of health,
And ripening time, whose every motion seemed
The wak'ning of ethereal gracefulness
To life, and on whose lineaments the light
Of a seraphic imagery play'd;
Forms lithe and rounded by the art of youth
To be the shrines of spirit excellence,
And hold the fusion of immortal grace
Unblemish'd by corporeal defect.
What found he then? Flower-wreathed chalices
Tinted with rosy dyes, bright elegance
Of shape and garniture, but brimming up
Draughts bitter to the taste and nauseous.
He gazed upon their beauty, which his soul
In thought had dower'd with purity and truth,
As from the inward reflex of itself;
But, gazing, all his visions pass'd away,
And cold reality rose death-like up
To mow the aureate blossoms from his soul.
In Amathus the chill grey morning dawn'd
That woke him to truth's ruggedness, and left
Life struggling, joyless, sunless, to its goal.
Woman stood forth before him beautiful,
But mocking heaven with a shameless brow,
Wearing foul lewdness like a victor's crown,
And dashing virtue's elixir away.
From the deep fountains of her eyes there flow'd
No lucid streams of holiness and love,
But lust and utter wantonness, that fill'd
The heart with loathing, fraught with death to Hope.
Her crimson lips shed forth no silvery strains
Of gentleness and peace to hymn life's bark
Across the heaving waters of this Time,
But folly and discordant revelry
Sounded around her evermore, and woo'd
To sin and shame with notes once toned for heaven.
No Priestess she of lovely innocence,
Stoled for the work with beauty nigh divine,
But, warping all her natal destiny,
Prostrate she lay before the shrine of vice,
Yielding herself a living sacrifice
To the deep blasting of the idol's breath.
The heart clings fondly to the last faint hope
That bindeth still the once dear to its love,
Rejecting credence whilst a doubt remains,
And so Pygmalion. Thought he, 'tis a phase
Through which her soul doth pass, like rippling streams
That filter for a space through earth's deep pores,
Emerging thence more pure and bright than erst,
And set himself with patient love to watch
The giddy current of her blinded soul,
For the subsidence of its troubled waves.
It came not; till his spirit sick'ning o'er,
Pour'd forth its bitterness and wounded sense.
"Oh! living lie! truth's outward counterfeit!
Fair masquerade of virtue's unknown charms!
Thou too hast perish'd from my trusting soul;
Thy beauty yet endureth, the fair sweep
Of limb and rounded form, such as my art
Can yield the senseless marble; but the soul
That made the work of heaven stand forth alone,
So peerless in its radiant loveliness,
Hath perished 'neath mortality's cold grasp,
And yielded up the patent of its charm.
Henceforth I can compete with Heaven, and fill
My world with bright creations as its own,
Unmarr'd by inner loathsomeness and sin,
That rushing through its pulses like a blight
Make beauty hideous. Thou, my soul, return,
Sit on thy throne, and with creative might
People thy kingdom with a beauteous race,
Fair form'd, and nobly featured, and the life
Set undulating on the Parian,
Whom viewing, thou may'st cry with lofty joy,
'Behold the life without its baser part.'
O Beauty! I have loved thee with full heart,
Follow'd thy shadowy guidance as the cloud
Sails at the unseen steering of the wind;
Sought thee in Heaven and Earth and Nature all,
Led by supreme adorings and desires,
Till by communion with thy perfect soul,
Mine hath grown wise, in measure, to discern.
Not now can I be satiate with grace
That gildeth but the superficial frame
With the false tissue of deep-seeming life;
The searching knife must pierce into the heart,
And shew a frame veined with the same warm stream
That melts in blushes on the downy cheek.
My bright ideal, like the bow of heaven,
Hath faded into nothingness, and made
A blank upon the clouded sky of life.
Can my soul live and love not?
"I will call
Art my divinity, and bid her frame
New joys to cherish such as Earth hath not
Create by natural developement;
Nature shall be my monitress, and teach
The chisel knowledge of all loveliness,
That wrought upon the snowy Parian,
Shall give investiture of life's pure part,
Grace, ease, and motion's unexerted power.
Better no soul than one debauched and foul,
And shaming beauty with eternal blots;
Therefore my creature shall be beautiful
With all that makes up woman's excellence;
Youth's bloom imprinted on her gentle charms,
And tenderness set playing on her lips,
Whilst round her gracious presence for a robe
Shall float the vesture of pure modesty;
A woman, she, save in the fallen soul,
A spotless angel framed, but spiritless;
This being shall I mould, and with my love
Animate to ideal consciousness,
Then let her sisterhood pass humbled on,
Unheeded in the depth of my content."
PART II.
THE WORKER.
Forth went he from the ebb and flow of men,
Whose busy vortex drowneth quiet thought,
To hold communion with wise Nature's soul
In solitude. Amongst lone woods he roamed,
Listing the murmurs of the swaying boughs
That quivered with the spirit of the breeze,
Threading their arched aisles with solemn heart,
And hiving in his soul a myriad thoughts
That fell unseen upon him. Oft he stood
On mountain fronts, and gazed long hours away,
Tracing the sweep of hill and dale, now veined
With glistening waters, and now dark with groves,
Still changing till sight lost identity,
And the ideal and the real met.
He saw the sun enter the golden gates
Of Night, that closed upon his radiant path,
And left Earth wondering; and star by star
Unlid their shining orbs, and o'er heaven's plain
Wheel their bright cars to greet him in the East.
He saw the morn break beautiful and pure,
Like virgin from her slumbers, and robe earth
In dewy brightness, cresting the far hills
With glorious halos of oncoming day.
All loveliness of earth and sky he sought,
And pondered with a heart attent to learn,
Knowing that Beauty, like a parent stream,
Is nourished by each trickling rill that flows
Into it; and the soul that would be apt
To work its highest counsels out, must toil
Through long apprentice-ship to mastery,
By units gath'ring fitness for the whole.
Thus did he, till with spirit brimming up
With glorious inspiration, he returned,
And set the god-like in him to create;
His swelling soul grew patient to the work,
Wise with the sense of innate potency,
And on the shapeless marble still he wrought
With faith and firm assurance.
Many came
Amid their aimless wanderings, and stood
Beside that quiet worker, wondering
At the majestic purpose on his brow,
And vapouring forth their self-important views,
That turned his course as little as the air
Swerveth the eagle in his lightning flight.
Many applauded with patronic warmth
And empty commendation, and no scorn
Curled his proud lip, not one defiant word
Echoed their nothings into transient life.
But as the marble grew beneath his hands
To shape and comeliness, his soul-deep eyes
Flashed with the joy of high accomplishment,
And scanned each valiant critic with a glance
That sifted all his littleness away.
Thus did he till his work stood perfected,
A woman beautiful with youth and grace,
But like a Vestal singled from her sex
To show the beauty of pure innocence.
Her form was such as rapt Endymion
Saw on the heights of Latmos when he slept
And dreamed Heaven down to him. A glorious shape
That to the brightness of ethereal charms
Join'd the familiar sweetness of a maid;
A soft clear forehead circled by the light
That heaven sets lambent on its imaged self;
A face that beaming on the heart of man
As by a silent teaching in the sense
Makes goodness natural. Upon each limb
Grace laid its sweet commandment lovingly,
Whilst the fair bosom glowed with tenderness,
As from the fulness of a soul beneath,
Woman's divinest attribute possessed
Unsullied and entire; and through the frame
And every feature radiating went
A lovely sense of gentleness and love.
Bright is the summer of Cyprus,
Undimm'd the skies and clear,
Blue and clear as a maiden's eyes
That loves and hath never felt sadness.
Then, Time is a sunlit river
Flowing 'mid flowers and green pastures
Brightly onward to heaven!
There is music pervading the air,
Music of voice and of instrument,
And the silver toning of laughters
Blendeth in jubilant chorus;
Bands of maidens and youths
With flowing garments of purple,
And zones jewelled and bright
As the mystic girdle of Venus,
Wreathed with myrtle and roses,
And their beauty wantonly bared
To the swimming glances of passion,
Evermore sweep o'er the pathways,
Strewing sweet flowers as they go
To the sacred altars of Venus
'Neath the feet of the snow-white kine,
That must bleed at the shrine of the goddess;
Care is forgotten, for life
Hath no aim and no mission but pleasure;
Its cup is a foretaste of Paradise,
Drain the sweet draught to the dregs,
The fountain will flow on for ever!
'Tis the feast day of Venus--Hail! Hail!
Pygmalion stood beside his master-piece,
Still with his mind devote to mighty thoughts
And busy inspiration, for through Time
The worker must be constant to his toil,
Heedless of pleasure and the idle toys
For which man bartereth eternity;
Life is his seed-time, after life his rest.
Had he not joyed to scan that lovely form,
And mark each glorious lineament, that held
A model up to Nature of pure grace
Unblemished by the shadow of a fault?
Had he not loved with more than Artist soul
The beauteous creature of his heaven-drawn power,
And oped again the flood-gates of his heart
To the full current of humanity?
Had he not thanked the gods for victory,
And gloried in his strength with conscious might
That made e'en fame his fellow? Yet he stood
Silent and sad beside his finished work.
What lacked he yet? Life! life! for his creation:
"What have I wrought," he uttered, "what achieved?
Naught! naught! my power hath wasted on a stone,
Changed its rude seeming haply unto grace,
But as it was, so is it now, mere stone;
My beauteous image, emblem of my soul,
Cast in the mould of thought's supremest good,
Fairer than all of womankind on Earth,
Is yet more worthless and more transient
Than is the meanest wretch who feels the life
Throb quenchlessly within him. Time may strew
Its fragments blindly o'er the face of Earth,
Scatter its spotless beauties, yet pass on
And leave the world no poorer than it was.
There is no beauty separate from soul;
From it as from a spring flow all the streams
That clothe this dust with living loveliness
Else doomed to deep aridity and death.
O lovely daughter of my craving soul!
Hope of my life! Divinest shape of Earth!
Can I regard thy beauty thus and know
Thou art the empty semblance of a worthless thing.
Are those sweet charms where loveliness hath set
The limits of her potency, mere dust
Unnobled by the passage of a soul,
Rescued a moment from the senseless mass,
That soon again shall have thee for its own?
What hath my soul begotten? Death in life--
A child of Earth unblessed, unstamped of heaven.
First-fruit of Spirit love! is this thy fate?
Gods! hear me from your thrones! Must it be so?"
Forth sped he.
Like a stream that is swayed in the sunlight,
Breaking in flashes of brightness,
The people of Cyprus were gathered
Around the temple of Venus;
Mirth and music ascended.
Amid the fumes of the incense,
Loud as when pleasure hath knocked
On a heart that is hollow and empty.
Maidens rejoiced in their shame,
And fancied their lewdness devotion,
Banishing thought from their bosoms,
And making them giddy with passion.
Men forgetting their birthright,
And the glorious spirit of freedom,
Made themselves slaves unto folly,
And lust, and imbecile pleasure.
Life was summed up in the Present,
For foolishness knoweth no Future.
Through the deluded mass Pygmalion prest,
As each true soul must on its course to Fame,
Blind to the follies that beset his path,
The empty pleasures, and fictitious joys;
Deaf to the jeers and mockings of the crowd,
Their sottish laughters and unmeaning mirth,
His senses all attent to his great aim,
Fixed on the prize of immortality.
Within the Temple separate he stood
From the base host of giddy worshippers,
And prostrated his soul with strong desire
At the bright shrine of Cytherea's power.
"O Cypris! goddess! Light of heaven and Earth!
That from the snow-crest of the waving sea,
The endless worker--the unresting soul,
Sprang'st in the glory of thy charms divine,
And Beauty mad'st immortal! That dost hold
The sacred urn of everlasting love,
Whose draught is life, strength, rapture to the soul,
And pouring of its fulness o'er the Earth,
Makest its drooping energies revive,
To struggle onward through the fight of life!
O thou divinest arbitress of fate!
Stoop from thy starry throne, receive my prayer,
And grant me life, breath, being for my work.
Let not the love that glorifies a man,
Sink 'neath the level of humanity,
And take unto its Holiest a shape
Of woman's dust engraven on a stone;
Grant that this first-fruit of my soul may be
Endued with lovely immortality;
That she may have the throbbing pulse of life,
Quick'ning with every gracious influence,
To work some sweet seraphic Purpose out,
And walking 'mongst Earth's multitudes exalt
Man's soul to worship Beauty, that when I
The Worker shall have gone unto my rest,
A glorious witness may remain to tell
That such an one wrought, struggled and attained."
Thus prayed he. And an answer stirred his soul,
"That which is born of Truth dies never. Time
Still takes its sweet impression as it flies,
And drops it seed-like into some wise heart,
Where it may blossom and bear fruit anew
To make its good perpetual. Thy prayer
Is heard. The fire shall go from Heaven. Thy work
Shall live."
Homeward he sped, and by his work stood soon.
O'er that sweet visage once so motionless,
To his rapt gaze there stole the rays divine
That bear all high intelligence of heaven,
And undulating o'er each graceful line
Made the cold stone angelic. Liquid eyes,
Bright with all pure imaginings, and full
Of young emotion, love, and gentleness,
Beamed softly on him in dim wonderment;
Whilst from her lips that parted half for speech,
Flowed the deep sweetness of a woman's smile,
And o'er his perplex'd spirit shed the light
Of Hope and glad assurance. All her frame
Glowed with the rosy hue of life and youth,
And melting from the rigidness of stone
Sank into attitudes of peerless grace.
And when conviction strengthened in his soul
As the awak'ning beauties of his work
Expanded 'neath the spirit influence,
He clasp'd the maid unto his beating heart,
As father might the daughter of his love,
Rejoicing with blent pride and tenderness
In the supernal beauty of his child.
Hearing within him murmurs of a voice--
"I have accomplish'd, have not wrought in vain,
Left no faint record written on the tide
Of life, to perish with its setting wave;
But my fair work shall live for evermore,
And through the phalanx of advancing Ages
Speed like a herald sounding to the world,
'Behold a man who crushed oblivion,
'And girding up his soul in faith and love
'Wrought like a God beyond the reach of Time!'"
[The end]
Walter R. Cassels's poem: Pygmalion
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