The record-union., 1897-06-06
For the Record Union"
ART.


ANY estimate of art in the abstract that
leaves out of consideration the important
element of the Divine Architect is faulty
to the extent of its majority No castles
OF the feudai ages are equal to the castel-
lated peaks of our mountain ranges, and
nothing human hands can rear is equal in
the beautiful blending OF the tiniest petals
OF springs earliest flowers. With this
thought in mind, and the further thought
that every good design that is worked out
either by Divine or human hands, has the
element OF art about 1t, have written the
following lines, realizing how impossible
1t was to touch more than the veriest
fraction of the many immortal devotees of
art
From the heart
From the brain, from the soul,
From the heavenly impulse beyond con-
troll
From the rugged rhythmics of the sea,
From the plum-ed songsters in their glee
From the stately sentinel mountains,
From all their slope-fed fountains,
From the dark enveloping storm,
From the sunshine clear and warm
Art, the transcendent, beautiful art,
The wise interpreter of the heart,
FROM where the fateS have fenced thee in,
Come for thou hast a world to win.
Come to the heart of the devotee,
And he will be guided alone by thee.
Marble and granite in stately wall
Welcome thee to their gorgeous hail.
Llmners tighten their canvas scroll
The lowiest artisan with his sledge
Beats with the throb of thy faithful
pledge.
The alchemist dreamed of thy sunny wings
And the poet woes thee when he sings.
The inventor bends at thy sanity shrine,
Thy interpretations are all divine.
The seer hath said of thee Art is long,"
As he pours out his life to thee in song.
The bells are Ginning and steadily timing
Thy march in the masterful sway of
the earth,
Yet millions of yaarc hafora itc birth
From the lowlandS of Chaos thou vast
climbing.
God breathed thee into the sea of living
AT the. dawn of His purpose in the
In each shadow across his dial whirled
His added impulse TO thee was giving.
With Moses he chiselled thy decalogue,
And burned his glow to the prophets
face.
His stately steppings no force could clog,
AS he set the morning of our race.
He touched thy reed in Miriams hand
To knell nation, athwart his way
And David interpreted thy command,
AS he CROPPED from his darkness into day.
In the simple life of the NaZarine
He gave eternity's masterpiece,
For He tore away what lay between
The race and its ultimate surceaSe.
With the epics of Homer he freed thy
wings
With Avon's bard thy majestic flight
Carried thee into the courts of Kings,
Thou didst clothe great Milton in gar
ments white,
To enter the holy of HOLES and trace
From the fallen angels a fallen race.
From the middle age black with the deeds
of men.
With Dante's imaginings dipped the pen,
To picture the horrible realms of despair,
Where only death and his demons are.
From Bonnie Doom and the banks of Ayr
Thou didst bend with Burns in the Cot
Or joined with him in his lighter mood
To haunt poor Tam" where Alloway
stood
Or with Scott and the wandering James
Fitz James
To the fortune of combat submit your
claims.
Or with Marmon hurl back the Douglas
pride,
Or with Greame claim Ellen for a bride.
With Schiller didst sing of the Scottish
Queen
In words that We're worthy truer song
She was only part of her country's
wrong,
Yet too great part for Queen Bess'' to
screen.
We sigh for Scots Mary within her
grave,
But the hand of Elizabeth could not save,
Except at the peril of her own,
And the proudest record of England
throne
At home was art at Newstead's shade,
Where the hand of Byron all unafraid,
Gave Rolands for every divers thrust,
But in self-exile gave his dust,
His souls great memory, Greece to save,
And to add one more to her stored brave.
Sweet was her walk by Wordsworth's
side
In the pensive moods of the pastoral
guide.
Here nature and art all interchanged,
Through every vale of England ranged.
In the hand of Moore through Tara's halls
Thou dust shatter the moss on the old gray
walls;
Or the matchless legends of Ispahan
Bring out like a wizard for earth to scan
From the magic touch of his matchless
Tyre
Lit from his country's mournful pyre.
Or with rich plume of fancy steel.
With Campbell the story of brave Lochiel.
Or mourn with him poor Poland's fate
And wreath Prague'S chaplet to her great
Or with Montgomery balm the dead
In the story of Arnold Winkelried,
Breaking the line with his bleeding breast
For .Switzerland'S lesson to the west.
Never marble spoke truer to sculptor's
hand
Than Tennyson's touch to the hand of
art
When every impulse of human heart
Sprang to place at his kingly command.
One by one came coping and stone,
Till the Capstone told of a world outgroWn
And heaven made room for another star
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