Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/199

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AURORA LEIGH.
Against our just damnation. Stand aside;We'll muse for comfort that, last century,On this same tragic stage on which we have failed,A wigless Hamlet would have failed the same.
And whosoever writes good poetry,Looks just to art. He does not write for youOr me,—for London or for Edinburgh;He will not suffer the best critic knownTo step into his sunshine of free thoughtAnd self-absorbed conception, and exactAn inch-long swerving of the holy lines.If virtue done for popularityDefiles like vice, can art for praise or hireStill keep its splendour, and remain pure art?Eschew such serfdom. What the poet writes,He writes: mankind accepts it, if it suits,And that's success: if not, the poem's passedFrom hand to hand, and yet from hand to hand,Until the unborn snatch it, crying outIn pity on their fathers' being so dull,And that's success too.I will write no plays.Because the drama, less sublime in this,Makes lower appeals, defends more menially,Adopts the standard of the public tasteTo chalk its height on, wears a dog chain roundIts regal neck, and learns to carry and fetchThe fashions of the day to please the day;Fawns close on pit and boxes, who clap hands,
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