A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields/My Utopia (Amédée Pommier)
A poem to be gathered in a book
Of golden song, to occupy its nook
In a collection not unworthily,
An ode, a sonnet, or an elegy—
This was and is my day-dream. Oh for power
To generate a marvel, like a flower
Delicate; polished, damascened with gold
And rich enamelled, like a sword-hilt old!
No monument ambitious would I raise,
Pyramid or palace that would fix the gaze,
Or pompous column towering to the skies,
But a mere atom, nothing in its size,
Yet a creation, wonderful; sublime
By its perfection; a short magic rhyme;
A work of patience, humble, seeming slight,
Formed slowly, like the brilliant stalactite,
Worth a great poem in its tenuity,
And born to last through all eternity.
Oh to show forth What constancy of heart
And study may achieve in noble art!
Oh to create with love and anxious care,
And leave the world, the poet's only heir,
A brave medallion like a relic rare
Which would be better loved and understood
As years glide silent by the multitude,
And which would in the course of time command
The homage due unto the master-hand.
Greek lapidaries of an age long past,
Who wrought works delicate for aye to last,
Whose skilful fingers on the agate cut
Venus and Hebe, and where rocks abut
Over the waters, Sappho with her lyre,
Sculptors minute, whose wonders never tire,
Artists in truth, and nature's worshippers,
Who jousted like to brave knight-jewellers
To win the honours of the highest place
For bold conception, delicacy, grace!
Ah, that I also had the tool and hand
Which graves a profile from the heavenly land,
Or a fair figure, such as sometimes gleams
Athwart a poet's or a virgin's dreams!
I would have made an ornamental seal
Big as a thumb-nail, with a madman's zeal
And unremitting labour, all alone,
Upon a bit of ivory or stone.
I would have staked mine art, my chance of fame,
In richly working out my thought and aim,
And left behind an everlasting gem,
Large as a peach-stone, worth a diadem!
We die now from redundance and excess,
Elixirs and perfumes are spiritless
Unless condensed; diffuse thoughts need a press.
I should collect the tear, though hard my part,
That filters from a suffering broken heart,
Then like a fly in amber it should shine,
Placed in its frame, as in a sacred shrine,
Or sepulchre transparent. As the fly
Looks in its case a jewel from the sky,
So should the dew-drop like a star shed calm
When in my verse the treasure I embalm.
But great good fortune comes not every day;
Horace and Petrarch each in his own way
Were favoured oft. Ah, e'en in petty things
The perfect and the absolute are for kings
Of thought,—not open here below
To all, but only those on whom bestow
The Muses, gifts. This ideal model small
That in our spirits floats scarce seen at all,
This grain of dust, this sun-kissed glittering mote,
Of art, this intangible asymptote,
Is hard to seize and hard to realise,
Though our hearts break in trying—off it flies!
We weep not all, alas! the tears sublime
That crystallise and change to pearls by time.