Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/298

260 The world but feels the present's spell:

The poet feels the past as well;

Whatever men have done, might do,

Whatever thought, might think it too.

EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOÖN.

morn as through Hyde Park we walked,

My friend and I, by chance we talked

Of Lessing's famed Laocoön;

And after we a while had gone

In Lessing's track, and tried to see

What painting is, what poetry,—

Diverging to another thought,

"Ah!" cries my friend, "but who hath taught

Why music and the other arts

Oftener perform aright their parts

Than poetry? why she, than they,

Fewer fine successes can display?

"For 'tis so, surely! Even in Greece,

Where best the poet framed his piece,

Even in that Phœbus-guarded ground

Pausanias on his travels found

Good poems, if he looked, more rare

(Though many) than good statues were—

For these, in truth, were everywhere.

Of bards full many a stroke divine

In Dante's, Petrarch's, Tasso's line,

The land of Ariosto showed;

And yet, e'en there, the canvas glowed

With triumphs, a yet ampler brood,

Of Raphael and his brotherhood.