The San Francisco call., 1897-01-24
CALIFORNIA VERSE


idea OF its spirit and purpose. The first relates
TO the birth of the modern world at the period
Of the revival of learning when man threw off
the tyranny of the moral ideal and reasserted
the sway OF his physical and Intellectual
natures:
THE RENAISSANCE.
The dead awoke! The great Of bygone times
In glorious resurrection from their tombs
Rose like immortal spirits OF the past,
Flaming the lights of wi.dom on manKind.
And with their temperance passed away
The somber clouds, The dark funereal hues
hat settled like pal upon the earth,
The life that was dumb, and cold, and bare,
The sackcloth and the ashes worn in prize,
The scorn u Learning Pagan vice,
The Faustus dream of terror, that the soul
Could purchase knowledge by its doom alone
Man woke as from troubled dream oppressed.
The crippled powers of the mind released
From their ascetic bondage took wings
In freedoms air, and led by Perarch's muse
In an enchanted realm once more perceived
In ioveliness canon most divine.
The stones reanimate with tales OF cd
Spoke in their sculpture language OF the past
OF glory, long forg often the dead.
The sun once more illumed the blue of heaven,
Once more the flowers smiled within the fields
In spiendor as of yore and once again
Fair nature with her thousand tongues proclaimed
The goodness of earth and earthly life.
The following is a Characterization of one of
sal genius of the Renaissance:
LEONARDO DA vINCL
Framed like Hercules within his face
There shone majesty sublime with lights
Which awed while they attracted those who saw.
The face had all the grandeur that the Greek
Gave to Olympan deity in stone
\ very prince in courtesy. refined
10 sweetest eloquence of speech, and act
Enhancing in is generous chivalry,
None could resist the magic OF his tongue.
A voice whose organ richness charmed the ear
With more than music's spell. made him the pride
OF Florence in the palace OF the fair
No horseman rode With such d airing grace
Nor could he find a match in manly sports.
So strong his fingers bent a coin with ease,
Then like woman's swept the golden Tyre
Till the delicate strings beEeath his touch
Shook with divine vibrations. Not art
Or science failed to bow before his will
go full had the divine revealed itself
To him, he merely looked and saw the truth
With grasp Intuitive in natures realm.
In sculpture, sforzas Horse proclaim his kin
7 o antique masters, ere it was destroyed.
And even to this day the painter signs
Before the Mona Lisa the
OF him whose vision fixed the face Of Christ
For all the generations of mankind.
Here is an example of the treatment OF one
OF the ethical functions OF art:
REALISM AND THE HIGHER LIFE
And is It lived? Yes, here and there obscured
In isolated characters Unknown,
Unnoticed oft, its strong divineness lost
Upon the sensual blinded. Sill * sounds
The one true note among the thousand false
woman here the deeper music Strikes
And here man new rhythms from the chords
Of individual life evokes. Ever
The human hears the God-voce speaking plain
\ bove the worlds roar, hears and answers
l. straight
With the full force of au untrammeled soul
In person al act concordant with the reach
OF mans ideal sense. Art catches quick
Ere they are lost for aye these vibrant notes
And blend S their sweetness 10 a harmony
Immo rtal and complete. Great artists thrill
To every wave of higher life that strikes
From out the human sea- And here is seen
Their noblest function. Every form they mold
Perpetuates perfections thus impinged
Upon their souls from out their restless age
They seize upon the god of higher lifer
nd brush aside the cosmic dust until
The crystalline of purest spirit CLEANS
Emancipated from the sensual world,
SO seeing viii the dropping heart take cheer,
And the faint soul renew its failing strength.
The closing extract shows the treatment of
art thought with which the work abounds in
its 5000 lines:
CLASSICAL Law THE FNcHANTREss OF THE
ARTS
There Is phantom figure in the arts
Luring the souls of artists their ruin
Siren-ke, so bewitching all who seek
Her SMILE that ever after heart and hand
Are held In honda ge He who once submits
To ideal beauty a constant guide
Abandons fact for fiction, and for him
In vain without charm fair nature wreathes
Her thousand faces in thousand smiles.
For he who thinks he improve on these
By combination never can behold
Perfection in a natural line again.
For such the very soul OF beauty dies
In an impossible abstraction. Such
Pursue in vain mocking cloud with loss
OF every noble power IN their work,
And at their best their lines viii slide into
The pompous nomenclature of an art,
Dead to all vital feelings of delight,
In which sickly loneliness conceals
The skeleton of unreaty Beware
The snare OF ideal beauty, Florentines.
No man can reach beyond the works of him
Who stamped the petals of the morning rose,
Upon the mountains wrote sublimity,
And drew himself within the form of man.
The proclamation OF the law divine
OF beauty can be found in natures realm
Alone, where all who seek may find insphered
Her image, sculptured by the hand of God.