The book has some truth in it, I believe: And truth outlives pain, as the soul does life. I know we talk our Phædons to the end Through all the dismal faces that we make, O’er-wrinkled with dishonouring agony From any mortal drug. I have written truth, And I a woman; feebly, partially, Inaptly in presentation, Romney’ll add, Because a woman. For the truth itself, That’s neither man’s nor woman’s, but just God’s; None else has reason to be proud of truth: Himself will see it sifted, disenthralled, And kept upon the height and in the light, As far as, and no farther, than ’tis truth; For,—now He has left off calling firmaments And strata, flowers and creatures, very good,— He says it still of truth, which is His own. Truth, so far, in my book;—the truth which draws Through all things upwards; that a twofold world Must go to a perfect cosmos. Natural things And spiritual,—who separates those two In art, in morals, or the social drift, Tears up the bond of nature and brings death, Paints futile pictures, writes unreal verse, Leads vulgar days, deals ignorantly with men, Is wrong, in short, at all points. We divide This apple of life, and cut it through the pips,— The perfect round which fitted Venus’ hand Has perished utterly as if we ate Both halves. Without the spiritual, observe, The natural’s impossible;—no form, No motion! Without sensuous, spiritual Is inappreciable;—no beauty or power! And in this twofold sphere the twofold man (And still the artist is intensely a man) Holds firmly by the natural, to reach The spiritual beyond it,—fixes still The type with mortal vision, to pierce through, With eyes immortal, to the antetype Some call the ideal,—better called the real, And certain to be called so presently When things shall have their names. Look long enough On any peasant’s face here, coarse and lined, You’ll catch Antinous somewhere in that clay, As perfect-featured as he yearns at Rome From marble pale with beauty; then persist, And, if your apprehension’s competent, You’ll find some fairer angel at his back, As much exceeding him, as he the boor, And pushing him with empyreal disdain For ever out of sight. Ay, Carrington Is glad of such a creed! an artist must, Who paints a tree, a leaf, a common stone, With just his hand, and finds it suddenly A-piece with and conterminous to his soul. Why else do these things move him, leaf or stone? The bird’s not moved, that pecks at a spring-shoot; Nor yet the horse, before a quarry, a-graze: But man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him, A mere itself,—cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally,