Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/203

Rh 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!