olished slab-stone find its place,
To the first prod of pick-axe at the base
Of the unquarried mountain,--what was all
Mind's varied process except natural,
Nay, easy, even, to descry, describe,
After our fashion? "So worked Mind: its tribe
Of senses ministrant above, below,
Far, near, or now or haply long ago
Brought to pass knowledge." But Soul's sea,--drawn whence,
Fed how, forced whither,--by what evidence
Of ebb and flow, that's felt beneath the tread,
Soul has its course 'neath Mind's work over-head,--
Who tells of, tracks to source the founts of Soul?
Yet wherefore heaving sway and restless roll
This side and that, except to emulate
Stability above? To match and mate
Feeling with knowledge,--make as manifest
Soul's work as Mind's work, turbulence as rest,
Hates, loves, joys, woes, hopes, fears, that rise and sink
Ceaselessly, passion's transient flit and wink,
A ripple's tinting or a spume-sheet's spread
Whitening the wave,--to strike all this life dead,
Run mercury into a mould like lead,
And henceforth have the plain result to show--
How we Feel, hard and fast as what we Know--
This were the prize and is the puzzle!--which
Music essays to solve: and here's the hitch
That balks her of full triumph else to boast.

Then follows his explanation of the "hitch," which necessitates a
comparison with the other arts. His contention is that art adds nothing
to the _knowledge_ of the mind. It simply moulds into a fixed form
elements already known which before lay loose and dissociated, it
therefore does not really create. But there is one realm, that of
feeling, to which the arts never succeed in giving permanent form
though all try to do it. What is it they succeed in getting? The poet
does not make the point very clear, but he seems to be groping after the
idea that the arts present only the _phenomena_ of feeling or the image
of feeling instead of the _reality_. Like all people who are
appreciative of music, he realizes that music comes nearer to expressing
the spiritual reality of feeling than the other arts, and yet music of
all the arts is the least permanent in its appeal.

VIII

All Arts endeavor this, and she the most
Attains thereto, yet fails of touching: why?
Does Mind get Knowledge from Art's ministry?
What's known once is known ever: Arts arrange,
Dissociate, re-dist