Lxxviii

Ah, thanks! quick--where the dipping disk Shows red against the rise and fall o' the fin! there frisk In shoal the--porpoises? Dolphins, they shall and must Cut through the freshening clear--dolphins, my instance just! 'T is fable, therefore truth: who has to do with these, Needs never practice trick of going hands and knees As beasts require. Art fain the fish to captivate? Gather thy greatness round, Arion! Stand in state, As when the banqueting thrilled conscious--like a rose Throughout its hundred leaves at that approach it knows Of music in the bird--while Corinth grew one breast A-throb for song and thee; nay, Periander pressed The Methymnæan hand, and felt a king indeed, and guessed How Phœbus' self might give that great mouth of the gods Such a magnificence of song! The pillar nods, Rocks roof, and trembles door, gigantic, post and jamb, As harp and voice rend air--the shattering dithyramb! So stand thou, and assume the robe that tingles yet With triumph; strike the harp, whose every golden fret Still smoulders with the flame, was late at fingers' end-- So, standing on the bench o' the ship, let voice expend Thy soul, sing, unalloyed by meaner mode, thine own, The Orthian lay; then leap from music's lofty throne Into the lowest surge, make fearlessly thy launch! Whatever storm may threat, some dolphin will be stanch! Whatever roughness rage, some exquisite sea-thing Will surely rise to save, will bear--palpitating-- One proud humility of love beneath its load-- Stem tide, part wave, till both roll on, thy jewell'd road Of triumph, and the grim o' the gulf grow wonder-white I' the phosphorescent wake; and still the exquisite Sea-thing stems on, saves still, palpitatingly thus, Lands safe at length its load of love at Tænarus, True woman-creature!