bosom the Promethean vulture is already perched, and groweth with his
growth. His comrades are playing and making merry; they are preparing
for their riper years recollections of childhood's days of
paradise--childhood, that never can be but once: the time cometh, and
he remembereth but the tormenting dreams of that age. Youth is at
hand; for others 'tis the time of love, of soft ties, of revelry--the
feast of life; for the artist, none of these. Solitary, flying from
society, he avoideth the maiden, he avoideth joy; plunging into the
loneliness of his soul, he there, with indescribable mourning, with
tears of inspiration, on his knees before his Ideal, imploreth her to
come down upon earth to his frail dwelling. Days and nights he
waiteth, and pineth after unearthly beauty. Woe to him if she doth
not visit him, and yet greater woe to him if she doth! The tender
frame of youth cannot bear her bridal kiss; union with the gods is
fatal to man; and the mortal is annihilated in her embrace. I speak
not of the education, of the mechanic preparation. And here at every
step the Material enchaineth thee, buildeth up barriers before thee:
marketh a formless vein upon thy block of marble, mingling soot with
thy carmine, entangling thy imagination in a net of monstrous rules
and formulas, commandeth thee to be the slave of the house-painter or
of the stone-cutter. And what awaiteth thee, when thou hast come
forth victorious from this mechanic school--when thou hast succeeded
in throwing off the heavy sum of a thousand unnecessary rules, with
which pedantry hath overwhelmed thee--when thou takest as thy guide
only those laws which are so plain and simple?... What awaiteth thee
then? Again the Material! Poverty, need, forced labour, appreciators,
rivals, that ever-hungry flock which flieth upon thee ready to tear
thee in pieces, as soon as it knoweth that thou art a pure possessor
of the gift of God. Thy soul burneth to create, but thy carcass
demandeth a morsel of bread; inspiration veileth her wing, but the