Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/201

Rh And yet, forbid, That any irreverent fancy or conceit Should litter in the Drama’s throne-room, where The rulers of our art, in whose full veins Dynastic glories mingle, sit in strength And do their kingly work,—conceive, command, And, from the imagination’s crucial heat, Catch up their men and women all a-flame For action all alive, and forced to prove Their life by living out heart, brain, and nerve, Until mankind makes witness, ‘These be men As we are,’ and vouchsafes the kiss that’s due To Imogen and Juliet—sweetest kin On art’s side. ’tis that, honouring to its worth The drama, I would fear to keep it down To the level of the footlights. Dies no more The sacrificial goat, for Bacchus slain,— His filmed eyes fluttered by the whirling white Of choral vestures,—troubled in his blood While tragic voices that clanged keen as swords, Leapt high together with the altar-flame, And made the blue air wink. The waxen mask, Which set the grand still front of Themis’ son Upon the puckered visage of a player;— The buskin, which he rose upon and moved, As some tall ship, first conscious of the wind, Sweeps slowly past the piers;—the mouthpiece,where The mere man’s voice with all its breaths and breaks Went sheathed in brass, and clashed on even heights