"Did he think I had given him a book to review? I ought to have known what the fellow would do," Muttered Phœbus aside, "for a thistle will pass Beyond doubt for the queen of all flowers with an ass; He has chosen in just the same way as he'd choose His specimens out of the books he reviews; And now, as this offers an excellent text, I'll give 'em some brief hints on criticism next." So, musing a moment, he turned to the crowd, And, clearing his voice, spoke as follows aloud:-- "My friends, in the happier days of the muse, We were luckily free from such things as reviews, Then naught came between with its fog to make clearer The heart of the poet to that of his hearer; Then the poet brought heaven to the people, and they Felt that they, too, were poets in hearing his lay; Then the poet was prophet, the past in his soul Pre-created the future, both parts of one whole; Then for him there was nothing too great or too small, For one natural deity sanctified all; Then the bard owned no clipper and meter of moods Save the spirit of silence that hovers and broods O'er the seas and the mountains, the rivers and woods He asked not earth's verdict, forgetting the clods, His soul soared and sang to an audience of gods. 'Twas for them that he measured the thought and the line, And shaped for their vision the perfect design, With as glorious a foresight, a balance as true, As swung out the worlds in the infinite blue; Then a glory and greatness invested man's heart, The universal, which now stands estranged and apart, In the free individual moulded, was Art; Then the forms of the Artist seemed thrilled with desire For something as yet unattained, fuller, higher, As once with her lips, lifted hands, and eyes listening, And her whole upward soul in her countenance glistening, Eurydice stood--like a beacon unfired, Which, once touch'd with flame, will leap heav'nward inspired-- And waited with answering kindle to mark The first gleam of Orpheus that pained the red Dark. Then painting, song, sculpture, did more than relieve The need that men feel to create and believe, And as, in all beauty, who listens with love, Hears these words oft repeated--'beyond and above,' So these seemed to be but the visible sign Of the grasp of the soul after things more divine; They were ladders the Artist erected to climb O'er the narrow horizon of space and of time, And we see there the footsteps by which men had gained To the one rapturous glimpse of the never-attained, As shepherds could erst sometimes trace in the sod The last spurning print of a sky-cleaving god.