The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
darkness; but now my brow catches, ay, and reflects, the calm, pure,
effulgent light of Nature's definite day, and I bathe myself in its happy
warmth. Erst, I grovelled like a worm, blind and earth-fed: now, I shall
speed through very space, winged heel and shoulder, a swift, untiring
Hermes, who have drunk of the milk that flows rich in Nature's breasts, and
am emancipate forever in the decorous freedom of the beautiful
self-conscious spirit! Oh, the glory, oh, the boon of Art, the play-deity!
Phoebus no longer drives herds for Admetus, but is grown into Helios, feels
in his breast the freer life of the very Hyperion, the walker on high. Ay,
ay, smile on, Mac, you and Ned! I shall not quarrel with you for not
understanding me; it is only just now that I have learned to understand
myself. My Art will reward me; even now, while you doubt, it is already
doing so. I tell you, you two, whom I love and honor", cried he, rising to
his feet, lifted up, as it were, by the exaltation of his soul, while his
voice rose like the gush of a fine-toned flute, "I tell you, moreover, that
I am an artist, with a work to do that shall be done, and so done that you
two who love me will be the first to salute me Artist, to recognize me, and
acknowledge me for what I shall become."
"We do that already, Clarian," said Mac's emphatic voice.
"No," said Clarian, firmly, proudly, like a poet about to kneel that he may
receive the laurel crown, "no, you do not know me yet."
And he was right. We did not yet know him.
"That is a boy after my own heart", said Mac, after we had returned to our
room. He was standing by the open window, and I at his elbow, both of us
thinking of the strange child we had just left, while our eyes took note of
the fair night, how the silvery sheen of the moonlight glistened upon the
leaves, and sprinkled itself in dappling flecks between the trees on the
soft even sward of the campus below. "A boy after my own heart,--and, in
spite of all his twaddle, will make an artist. It's in him."
"But did you not think him strangely wild to-night? I never heard him talk
so fluently; but it was not the talk of a sane man."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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