* * * * *

Toiling and yearning, ’tis man’s doom to see
  No perfect creature fashion’d of his hands. 
Insulted by a flower’s immaculacy,
  And mock’d at by the flawless stars he stands.

* * * * *

For metaphors of man we search the skies,
  And find our allegory in all the air. 
We gaze on Nature with Narcissus-eyes,
Enamour’d of our shadow everywhere.

* * * * *

One music maketh its occult abode
  In all things scatter’d from great Beauty’s hand;
And evermore the deepest words of God
  Are yet the easiest to understand.

* * * * *

Enough of mournful melodies, my lute!  Be henceforth joyous, or be henceforth mute.  Song’s breath is wasted when it does but fan The smouldering infelicity of man.

* * * * *

I pluck’d this flower, O brighter flower, for thee, There where the river dies into the sea.  To kiss it the wild west wind hath made free:  Kiss it thyself and give it back to me.

* * * * *

To be as this old elm full loth were I,
  That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head. 
Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lie
  Ere the path rustle with my foliage shed.

* * * * *

Ah, vain, thrice vain in the end, thy hate and rage, And the shrill tempest of thy clamorous page.  True poets but transcendent lovers be, And one great love-confession poesy.

* * * * *

His rhymes the poet flings at all men’s feet,
  And whoso will may trample on his rhymes. 
Should Time let die a song that’s true and sweet,
  The singer’s loss were more than match’d by Time’s.

* * * * *

ON LONGFELLOW’S DEATH

No puissant singer he, whose silence grieves
  To-day the great West’s tender heart and strong;
No singer vast of voice:  yet one who leaves
  His native air the sweeter for his song.

* * * * *

BYRON THE VOLUPTUARY

Too avid of earth’s bliss, he was of those
  Whom Delight flies because they give her chase. 
Only the odour of her wild hair blows
  Back in their faces hungering for her face.

* * * * *

ANTONY AT ACTIUM

He holds a dubious balance:—­yet that scale,
Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail? 
No; Cleopatra droppeth into this
One counterpoising orient sultry kiss.

* * * * *

ART