O vanished loveliness of flowers and faces,
Treasure of hair, and great immortal eyes,
Are there for these no safe and secret places? 
And is it true that beauty never dies? 
Soldiers and saints, haughty and lovely names,
Women who set the whole wide world in flames,
Poets who sang their passion to the skies,
And lovers wild and wise: 
Fought they and prayed for some poor flitting gleam,
Was all they loved and worshipped but a dream? 
Is Love a lie and fame indeed a breath,
And is there no sure thing in life—­but death? 
Or may it be, within that guarded shore,
He meets Her now whom I shall meet no more
Till kind Death fold me ’neath his shadowy wing: 
She whom within my heart I softly tell
That he is dead whom once we loved so well,
He, the immortal master whom I sing.

Immortal! yea, dare we the word again,
If aught remaineth of our mortal day,
That which is written—­shall it not remain? 
That which is sung, is it not built for aye? 
Faces must fade, for all their golden looks,
Unless some poet them eternalise,
Make live those golden looks in golden books;
Death, soon or late, will quench the brightest eyes—­
’Tis only what is written never dies. 
Yea, memories that guard like sacred gold
Some sainted face, they also must grow old,
Pass and forget, and think—­or darest thou not!—­
On all the beauty that is quite forgot.

Strange craft of words, strange magic of the pen,
Whereby the dead still talk with living men;
Whereby a sentence, in its trivial scope,
May centre all we love and all we hope;
And in a couplet, like a rosebud furled,
Lie all the wistful wonder of the world.

Old are the stars, and yet they still endure,
Old are the flowers, yet never fail the spring: 
Why is the song that is so old so new,
Known and yet strange each sweet small shape and hue? 
How may a poet thus for ever sing,
Thus build his climbing music sweet and sure,
As builds in stars and flowers the Eternal mind? 
Ah, Poet, that is yours to seek and find! 
Yea, yours that magisterial skill whereby
God put all Heaven in a woman’s eye,
Nature’s own mighty and mysterious art
That knows to pack the whole within the part: 
The shell that hums the music of the sea,
The little word big with Eternity,
The cosmic rhythm in microcosmic things—­
One song the lark and one the planet sings,
One kind heart beating warm in bird and tree—­
To hear it beat, who knew so well as he?

Virgil of prose! far distant is the day
When at the mention of your heartfelt name
Shall shake the head, and men, oblivious, say: 
‘We know him not, this master, nor his fame.’ 
Not for so swift forgetfulness you wrought,
Day upon day, with rapt fastidious pen,
Turning, like precious stones, with anxious thought,
This word and that again and yet again,
Seeking to match its meaning with the world;
Nor to the morning stars gave ears attent,
That you, indeed, might ever dare to be
With other praise than immortality
Unworthily content.