Analysis of The Ideal And The Actual Life
Forever fair, forever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice--
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods--With man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.
Seekest thou on earth the life of gods to share,
Safe in the realm of death?--beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their glow--
Short are the joys possession can bestow,
And in possession sweet desire will die.
'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river--
She plucked the fruit of the unholy ground,
And so--was hell's forever!
The weavers of the web--the fates--but sway
The matter and the things of clay;
Safe from change that time to matter gives,
Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray
With gods a god, amidst the fields of day,
The form, the archetype [39], serenely lives.
Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?
Cast from thee, earth, the bitter and the real,
High from this cramped and dungeon being, spring
Into the realm of the ideal!
Here, bathed, perfection, in thy purest ray,
Free from the clogs and taints of clay,
Hovers divine the archetypal man!
Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam
And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,--
Fair as it stands in fields Elysian,
Ere down to flesh the immortal doth descend:--
If doubtful ever in the actual life
Each contest--here a victory crowns the end
Of every nobler strife.
Not from the strife itself to set thee free,
But more to nerve--doth victory
Wave her rich garland from the ideal clime.
Whate'er thy wish, the earth has no repose--
Life still must drag thee onward as it flows,
Whirling thee down the dancing surge of time.
But when the courage sinks beneath the dull
Sense of its narrow limits--on the soul,
Bright from the hill-tops of the beautiful,
Bursts the attained goal!
If worth thy while the glory and the strife
Which fire the lists of actual life--
The ardent rush to fortune or to fame,
In the hot field where strength and valor are,
And rolls the whirling thunder of the car,
And the world, breathless, eyes the glorious game--
Then dare and strive--the prize can but belong
To him whose valor o'er his tribe prevails;
In life the victory only crowns the strong--
He who is feeble fails.
But life, whose source, by crags around it piled,
Chafed while confined, foams fierce and wild,
Glides soft and smooth when once its streams expand,
When its waves, glassing in their silver play,
Aurora blent with Hesper's milder ray,
Gain the still beautiful--that shadow-land!
Here, contest grows but interchange of love,
All curb is but the bondage of the grace;
Gone is each foe,--peace folds her wings above
Her native dwelling-place.
When, through dead stone to breathe a soul of light,
With the dull matter to unite
The kindling genius, some great sculptor glows;
Behold him straining, every nerve intent--
Behold how, o'er the subject element,
The stately thought its march laborious goes!
For never, save to toil untiring, spoke
The unwilling truth from her mysterious well--
The statue only to the chisel's stroke
Wakes from its marble cell.
But onward to the sphere of beauty--go
Onward, O child of art! and, lo!
Out of the matter which thy pains control
The statue springs!--not as with labor wrung
From the hard block, but as from nothing sprung--
Airy and light--the offspring of the soul!
The pangs, the cares, the weary toils it cost
Leave not a trace when once the work is done--
The Artist's human frailty merged and lost
In art's great victory won! [40]
If human sin confronts the rigid law
Of perfect truth and virtue [41], awe
Seizes and saddens thee to see how far
Beyond thy reach, perfection;--if we test
By the ideal of the good, the best,
How mean our efforts and our actions are!
This space between the ideal of man's soul
And man's achievement, who hath ever past?
An ocean spreads between us and that goal,
Where anchor ne'er was cast!
But fly the boundary of the senses--live
The ideal life free thought can give;
And, lo, the gulf shall vanish, and the chill
Of the soul's impotent despair be gone!
And with divinity thou sharest the throne,
Let but divini
Scheme | AABCCBDEDA FFGHHGIJIJKKLKKLMNMN KKXOODPQPQ RRCSSXTUTU QQVWWVXYXY ZZ1 KK1 2 3 2 3 AASEXS4 5 4 5 HHU6 6 UXXXX XXW7 7 WU8 U8 XXXXXD |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101010101 11110101 111100100101 1101010101 010010101 0101111101 100101001 011000110 1101010101 011111 1111011111 10011101 1101110111 101110111 1101010101 00010101011 110111111 110101010010 1101100101 0111010 0101010111 01000111 111111101 101111111 1101010111 010101101001 1111111101 1111010001 1111010101 01011001 1101001101 11010111 100101101 1111011111 01010101001 1111011 11110010101 11010001001 11010100101 1100101 1101011111 11111100 1011010011 1011011101 1111110111 1011010111 1101010101 1111010101 1101110100 10011 1111010001 1100111001 0101110111 0011110101 0101010101 00110101001 1101011101 11110101101 01010010101 111101 1111110111 11011101 1101111101 111101101 010111101 101100111 110110111 1111010101 1111110101 010101 1111110111 1011011 0101011101 01110100101 01110001100 01011101001 11011111 001011001001 01101011 111101 1101011101 10111101 1101011101 011111101 1011111101 100101101 0101010111 1101110111 0101010101 01110011 1101010101 1011010111 1001011111 0111010111 100110101 111010010101 1101001111 0101011101 1101011011 110111 11010010101 00111111 0101110001 1011000111 0101001101 111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,316 |
Words | 771 |
Sentences | 27 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 20, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 6 |
Lines Amount | 106 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 342 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 77 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:56 min read
- 105 Views
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"The Ideal And The Actual Life" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/14396/the-ideal-and-the-actual-life>.
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