The speaker in Lazarus’s sonnet confesses that art rarely comes from the heat of living. While the blood runs hot and the heart pounds, overwhelmed by joy or pain, the Muse stays silent—life itself becomes the poem. The body and emotions are a fully strung lyre, humming with the present. Only when the fever breaks and the day’s illusion fades does the poet find himself alone at twilight, where a figure called the Divine Consoler—looking exactly like Regret—takes his hand and kisses his brow. That sorrowful touch finally opens his lips. The closing lines reveal the speaker herself sings now for the same reason. The mood is tender and elegiac, a quiet wisdom that art’s truest source is not the blaze of experience but the softer ache of its passing.
Life and Art — Summary
Not while the fever of the blood is strong, The heart throbs loud, the eyes are veiled, no less With passion than with tears, the Muse shall bless The poet-sould to help and soothe with song. Not then she bids his trembling lips express The aching gladness, the voluptuous pain. Life is his poem then; flesh, sense, and brain One full-stringed lyre attuned to happiness. But when the dream is done, the pulses fail, The day's illusion, with the day's sun set, He, lonely in the twilight, sees the pale Divine Consoler, featured like Regret, Enter and clasp his hand and kiss his brow. Then his lips ope to sing--as mine do now.