These monologues all lead up to the great moral of the poem, which is
explicitly set forth at the end, namely, "that our human speech
is naught, our human testimony false, our fame and human estimation,
words and wind. Why take the artistic way to prove so much? Because,
it is the glory and good of Art, that Art remains the one way possible
of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least. How look a brother
in the face and say, Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou yet art blind,
thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length: and, oh,
the foolishness thou countest faith! Say this as silvery
as tongue can troll -- the anger of the man may be endured,
the shrug, the disappointed eyes of him are not so bad to bear --
but here's the plague, that all this trouble comes of telling truth,
which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, seems to be
just the thing it would supplant, nor recognizable by whom it left:
while falsehood would have done the work of truth. But Art, --
wherein man nowise speaks to men, only to mankind, -- Art may tell
a truth obliquely, DO THE THING SHALL BREED THE THOUGHT", that is,
bring what is IMPLICIT within the soul, into the right attitude
to become EXPLICIT -- bring about a silent adjustment
through sympathy induced by the concrete; in other words,
prepare the way for the perception of the truth --
"do the thing shall breed the thought, nor wrong the thought
missing the mediate word"; meaning, that Art, so to speak,
is the word made flesh, -- IS the truth, and, as Art,
has nothing directly to do with the explicit. "So may you paint
your picture, twice show truth, beyond mere imagery on the wall, --
so, note by note, bring music from your mind, deeper than ever
the Andante dived, -- so write a book shall mean beyond the facts,
suffice the eye and save the soul beside."