Asleep, yet lending half an ear To travellers on the Portsmouth road;-- 70 There build we thee, O guardian dear, Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode!
Then some, who through this garden pass, When we too, like thyself, are clay, Shall see thy grave upon the grass, 75 And stop before the stone, and say:
_People who lived here long ago Did by this stone, it seems, intend To name for future times to know The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend._ 80
One morn as through Hyde Park° we walk'd, °1 My friend and I, by chance we talk'd Of Lessing's famed Laocoön; And after we awhile had gone In Lessing's track, and tried to see 5 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 10 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 Phoebus-guarded ground° °15 Pausanias° on his travels found °16 Good poems, if he look'd, more rare (Though many) than good statues were-- For these, in truth, were everywhere. Of bards full many a stroke divine 20 In Dante's,° Petrarch's,° Tasso's° line, °21 The land of Ariosto° show'd; °22 And yet, e'en there, the canvas glow'd With triumphs, a yet ampler brood, Of Raphael° and his brotherhood. °25 And nobly perfect, in our day Of haste, half-work, and disarray, Profound yet touching, sweet yet strong, Hath risen Goethe's,° Wordsworth's° song; °29 Yet even I (and none will bow 30 Deeper to these) must needs allow, They yield us not, to soothe our pains, Such multitude of heavenly strains As from the kings of sound are blown, Mozart,° Beethoven,° Mendelssohn.°" °35
While thus my friend discoursed, we pass Out of the path, and take the grass. The grass had still the green of May, And still the unblackan'd elms were gay; The kine were resting in the shade, 40 The flies a summer-murmur made. Bright was the morn and south° the air; °42 The soft-couch'd cattle were as fair As those which pastured by the sea, That old-world morn, in Sicily, 45 When on the beach the Cyclops lay, And Galatea from the bay Mock'd her poor lovelorn giant's lay.° °48 "Behold," I said, "the painter's sphere! The limits of his art appear. 50 The passing group, the summer-morn, The grass, the elms, that blossom'd thorn-- Those cattle couch'd, or, as they rise, Their shining flanks, their liquid eyes-- These, or much greater things, but caught 55 Like these, and in one aspect brought! In outward semblance he must give A moment's life of things that live; Then let him choose his moment well, With power divine its story tell." 60