Alas, I still see something to be done, And what I do falls short of what I see Though I waste myself on doing. Long green days, Worn bare of grass and sunshine,—long calm nights, From which the silken sleeps were fretted out,— Be witness for me, with no amateur’s Irreverent haste and busy idleness I’ve set myself to art! What then? what’s done? What’s done, at last? Behold, at last, a book. If life-blood’s necessary,—which it is, (By that blue vein athrob on Mahomet’s brow, Each prophet-poet’s book must show man’s blood!) If life-blood’s fertilising, I wrung mine On every leaf of this,—unless the drops Slid heavily on one side and left it dry. That chances often: many a fervid man Writes books as cold and flat as grave-yard stones From which the lichen’s scraped; and if St. Preux Had written his own letters, as he might, We had never wept to think of the little mole ’Neath Julie’s drooping eyelid. Passion is But something suffered, after all. While Art Sets action on the top of suffering: The artist’s part is both to be and do, Transfixing with a special, central power The flat experience of the common man, And turning outward, with a sudden wrench, Half agony, half ecstasy, the thing He feels the inmost: never felt the less Because he sings it. Does a torch less burn For burning next reflectors of blue steel, That _he_ should be the colder for his place ’Twixt two incessant fires,—his personal life’s, And that intense refraction which burns back Perpetually against him from the round Of crystal conscience he was born into If artist-born? O sorrowful great gift Conferred on poets, of a twofold life, When one life has been found enough for pain! We, staggering ’neath our burden as mere men, Being called to stand up straight as demi-gods, Support the intolerable strain and stress Of the universal, and send clearly up With voices broken by the human sob, Our poems to find rhymes among the stars! But soft!—a ‘poet’ is a word soon said; A book’s a thing soon written. Nay, indeed, The more the poet shall be questionable, The more unquestionably comes his book! And this of mine—well, granting to myself Some passion in it, furrowing up the flats, Mere passion will not prove a volume worth Its gall and rags even. Bubbles round a keel Mean nought, excepting that the vessel moves. There’s more than passion goes to make a man, Or book, which is a man too. I am sad. I wonder if Pygmalion had these doubts, And, feeling the hard marble first relent, Grow supple to the straining of his arms, And tingle through its cold to his burning lip, Supposed his senses mocked, and that the toil