On Rembrandt; Occasioned By His Picture Of Jacob’s Dream

As in that twilight, superstitious age
When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind
Seemed fraught with meanings of supernal kind,
When e’en the learned, philosophic sage,
Wont with the stars through boundless space to range,
Listened with reverence to the changeling’s tale;–
E’en so, thou strangest of all beings strange!
E’en so thy visionary scenes I hail;
That, like the rambling of an idiot’s speech,
No image giving of a thing on earth,
Nor thought significant in Reason’s reach,
Yet in their random shadowings give birth
To thoughts and things from other worlds that come,
And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb.

There is a charm no vulgar mind can reach,
No critic thwart, no mighty master teach;
A charm how mingled of the good and ill!
Yet still so mingled that the mystic whole
Shall captive hold the struggling gazer’s will,
Till vanquished reason own its full control.
And such, O Rubens, thy mysterious art,
The charm that vexes, yet enslaves the heart!
Thy lawless style, from timid systems free,
Impetuous rolling like a troubled sea,
High o’er the rocks of reason’s lofty verge
Impending hangs; yet, ere the foaming surge
Breaks o’er the bound, the refluent ebb of taste
Back from the shore impels the watery waste.