And built up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God. ‘There’s nothing great Nor small,’ has said a poet of our day, (Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin’s bell) And truly, I reiterate, ... nothing’s small! No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee, But finds some coupling with the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere; No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim: And,—glancing on my own thin, veinéd wrist,— In such a little tremour of the blood The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries, And daub their natural faces unaware More and more, from the first similitude. Truth, so far, in my book! a truth which draws From all things upwards. I, Aurora, still Have felt it hound me through the wastes of life As Jove did Io: and, until that Hand Shall overtake me wholly, and, on my head, Lay down its large unfluctuating peace, The feverish gad-fly pricks me up and down, It must be. Art’s the witness of what Is Behind this show. If this world’s show were all, Then imitation would be all in Art; There, Jove’s hand gripes us!—For we stand here, we, If genuine artists, witnessing for God’s Complete, consummate, undivided work: —That not a natural flower can grow on earth, Without a flower upon the spiritual side, Substantial, archetypal, all a-glow With blossoming causes,—not so far away, That we, whose spirit-sense is somewhat cleared, May not catch something of the bloom and breath,— Too vaguely apprehended, though indeed Still apprehended, consciously or not, And still transferred to picture, music, verse, For thrilling audient and beholding souls By signs and touches which are known to souls,— How known, they know not,—why, they cannot find, So straight call out on genius, say, ‘A man Produced this,’—when much rather they should say, ‘’Tis insight, and he saw this.’ Thus is Art Self-magnified in magnifying a truth Which, fully recognised, would change the world And shift its morals. If a man could feel, Not one day, in the artist’s ecstasy, But every day, feast, fast, or working-day, The spiritual significance burn through The hieroglyphic of material shows, Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings, And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree, And even his very body as a man,— Which now he counts so vile, that all the towns Make offal of their daughters for its use On summer-nights, when God is sad in heaven To think what goes on in his recreant world He made quite other; while that moon He made