Bands of her limpid primitives,
     Or patterned in the curious braid,
     Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,
     For what he gives is he repaid. 
     Good is it if by him ’tis held
     He wins the fairest ever welled
     From Nature’s founts:  she whispers it:  Even I
     Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
     Else little is he lover.  Those he clasps,
     Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, —
     And be they doves or be they asps, —
     Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
     Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed. 
     Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
     Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned
     The lover.  Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,
     He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,
     Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. 
     Doth man divide divine Necessity
     From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts
     A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
     Present her; armed to bless and to constrain. 
     Of this he perishes; not she, the throned
     On rocks that spout their springs to the sacred mounts. 
     A loftier Reason out of deeper founts
     Earth’s chosen Goddess bears:  by none disowned
     While red blood runs to swell the pulse, she boasts,
     And Beauty, like her star, descends the sky;
     Earth’s answer, heaven’s consent unto man’s cry,
     Uplifted by the innumerable hosts.

     Quickened of Nature’s eye and ear,
     When the wild sap at high tide smites
     Within us; or benignly clear
     To vision; or as the iris lights
     On fluctuant waters; she is ours
     Till set of man:  the dreamed, the seen;
     Flushing the world with odorous flowers: 
     A soft compulsion on terrene
     By heavenly:  and the world is hers
     While hunger after Beauty spurs.

     So is it sung in any space
     She fills, with laugh at shallow laws
     Forbidding love’s devised embrace,
     The music Beauty from it draws.

     Poem:  A Reading of Life — The Test Of Manhood

     Like a flood river whirled at rocky banks,
     An army issues out of wilderness,
     With battle plucking round its ragged flanks;
     Obstruction in the van; insane excess
     Oft at the heart; yet hard the onward stress
     Unto more spacious, where move ordered ranks,
     And rise hushed temples built of shapely stone,
     The work of hands not pledged to grind or slay. 
     They gave our earth a dress of flesh on bone;
     A tongue to speak with answering heaven gave they. 
     Then was the gracious birth of man’s new day;
     Divided from the haunted night it shone.

     That quiet dawn was Reverence; whereof sprang
     Ethereal Beauty in full morningtide. 
     Another sun had risen to clasp his bride: 
     It was another earth unto him sang.