The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863. Various
the human word is born; it is named: Oratory, Poetry, Music! The art temple is now complete. Symbol of the universe, it represents all that is contained therein under the glittering veil of art.'
It is strange how, in the middle ages, the temple of art almost grew into one with the temple of faith; to this fact may be traced the elevated and devout character of the chefs-d'œuvre of those dim centuries. Thus the church became a sublime poem, where the glowing imagination of a tender faith lavished all its glories. That the Christian church then satisfied the heart with its mystic dogmas and symbolic representations, is proved by the fact that the masses did not care how obscure and squalid their own hovels might be, provided the temple was great and magnificent. It was the temple of simple, unreasoning, unquestioning faith, but decorated with the highest marvels of art; it was always thrown open to the people, and in it they passed nearly half their days. Man brought what he held to be his best to the temple in which he came to worship God, and in it was concentrated all the world knew of beauty. Its light but ornate steeples seemed to pierce the very clouds; its columns rivalled the shafts of the forest; its balustrades were exquisitely chiselled; its tapestry inwrought with the finest needle work;—all gave evidence that the hand of love had lingered tenderly over every line in the house dedicated by man to his Maker. The pictured saints and angels seemed to smile upon the kneeling people, while the majestic chants and requiems sounded to them like the very voices of the angels, heard from within the 'jasper gates' of the heavenly city. The white-robed and entoning priests were their joy and pride; they, as well as the cherished artists, were most frequently from their own oppressed ranks. Religion and art were alone then democratic; alone expounded to them the original equality of man. Thus they looked upon these temples, which art beautified for faith, as peculiarly their own, their refuge, their solace, their ark of safety in those times of war and trouble. They earnestly and devoutly believed them to be the sanctuaries of the risen God, in which dwelt his glorified Body. With the first rays of the sun flushing with roseate hues the mystic beauty of the temple, they congregated there to receive, in the glorious unity of a common humanity, Him whom the heavens cannot contain—the Son of God. They did not think, they felt; they could not reason, but they heard the church. Naive, simple, and trusting souls, with the Virgin to smile upon them, and the saints to pray for them.
It cannot surely be denied that art is full of indefinite and instinctive longing for the infinite.
Poetry is full of its pining voice. Chateaubriand says:
'When we are alone with nature, the feeling of the infinite forces itself irresistibly upon us. When the universe with its inexhaustible variety opens before us, when we contemplate the myriads of stars moving in ever-mystic harmony through the limitless immensity of space, when we gaze upon the ocean mingling with the sky in the boundless distance of the far horizon, when the earth and sea are rocked into profound calm, and creation itself seems wrapped in mystic contemplation—an undefinable feeling of melancholy seizes upon us, unknown desires awaken in the soul, they seem to call us into other countries far beyond the limits of the known—must it not then be the vague feeling after, the dim longing for, the infinite, which at such moments we feel strangely stirring in the calm depths of the divining soul?'
We find the same yearning breathing through the following beautiful poem of Mrs. Osgood's:
'As plains the home-sick ocean shell
Far from its own remembered sea,
Repeating, like a fairy spell,
Of love, the charmed melody
It learned within that whispering wave,
Whose wondrous and mysterious tone
Still wildly haunts its winding cave
Of pearl, with softest music-moan—
'So asks my home-sick soul below,
For something loved, yet undefined;
So mourns to mingle with the flow
Of music from the Eternal Mind;
So murmurs, with its childlike sigh,
The melody it learned above,
To which no echo may reply
Save from thy voice, Eternal Love!'
It is to his fervent and fiery expression of this longing for the infinite, characterizing, whether pure or perverted, almost the whole of Byron's poetry, breaking out sometimes in imprecations and despair, and not to his immorality, that his great popularity is to be attributed. Even in the midst of the most unhappy scepticism, it was the haunting passion of his soul. Alas! that this longing for the food of heaven should have been fed on husks until the lower rungs of the heaven ladder became so covered with the corruption of matter and fiery sparks of evil, that it seemed rather meant for the foul feet of demons, than for the elastic tread of the redeemed human soul to God! We quote from him in proof:
'Blue rolls the water, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high,
Bespangled with those isles of light,
So wildly, spiritually bright;
Who ever gazed upon them shining
Nor turned to earth without repining,
Nor wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with their eternal ray?'
'Oh, thou beautiful
And unimaginable ether! and
Ye multiplying masses of increased
And still increasing lights! what are ye?
What
Is this blue wilderness of interminable
Air, wherein ye roll along as I have seen
The leaves along the limpid streams of
Eden?
Is your course measured for ye? or do ye
Sweep on in your unbounded revelry
Through an aerial universe of endless
Expansion, at which my soul aches to think—
Intoxicated with eternity?'
'All heaven and earth are still—though not in sleep,
And breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep;—
All heaven and earth are still: from the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,
All is concentred in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.
'Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purify from self: it is a tone
The soul and source of music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm,
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone,
Binding all things with beauty; 'twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.'
In some of the most forcible lines ever penned, Byron has given us the whole psychological analysis of the effects of human passion, when, in its insane perversion, and misdirected thirst for the infinite, it pours upon the dust that love and worship which is due to God alone. No one who has thus sinned, will refuse to acknowledge their force and truth. Fearful in their Medusa-like beauty, they fascinate the heart, only to turn its warm pulses into ice. They are actually withering in their despair. Poor Byron! did he never, never cry with the repentant but happy St. Augustin: 'Oh, eternal beauty! too late have I known thee!'
'Alas!