Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/277

Rh The unescapable anguish of mankind,

That blots out natural joy!—O human soul,

Learn Courage, tho' the lightning strike thee blind;

Let Duty be thy worship; Love, thy goal:

Love, Duty, Courage—these make thou thy own,

Till from the unknown we pass into the unknown.

"ANGELO, THOU ART THE MASTER"

I

, thou art the master; for thou in thy art

Compassed the body, the soul; the form and the heart.

Knew where the roots of the spirit are buried and twined,

The springs and the rocks that shall suckle—and torture and bind.

Large was thy soul like the soul of a god that creates—

Converse it held with the stars and the imminent Fates.

Knewest thou—Art is but Beauty perceived and exprest,

And the pang of that Beauty had entered and melted thy breast.

Here by thy Slave, again, after long years do I bow—

Angelo, thou art the master, yea, thou, and but thou.

Here is the crown of all beauty that lives in the world;

Spirit and flesh breathing forth from these lips that are curled

With sweetness and sorrow as never, O, never before,

And from eyes that are heavy with light, and shall weep nevermore;

And lo, at the base of the statue, that monster of shape—

Thorn of the blossom of life, mocking face of the ape.

So cometh morn from the shadow and murk of the night;

From pain springeth joy, and from flame the keen beauty of light.