Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/196

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AURORA LEIGH.
187
Except that what succeeds must shame it quite,If God please. That's wrong thinking, to my mind,And wrong thoughts make poor poems.Every age,Through being beheld too close, is ill-discernedBy those who have not lived past it. We'll supposeMount Athos carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed,To some colossal statue of a man:The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,Had guessed as little of any human formUp there, as would a flock of browsing goats.They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles offOr ere the giant image broke on them,Full human profile, nose and chin distinct,Mouth, muttering rhythms of silence up the sky,And fed at evening with the blood of suns;Grand torso,—hand, that flung perpetuallyThe largesse of a silver river downTo all the country pastures. 'Tis even thusWith times we live in,—evermore too greatTo be apprehended near.But poets shouldExert a double vision; should have eyesTo see near things as comprehensiblyAs if afar they took their point of sight,And distant things, as intimately deep,As if they touched them. Let us strive for this.I do distrust the poet who discernsNo character or glory in his times,And trundles back his soul five hundred years,
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