ON THE BUST OF CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN.
A secret of the spheres, long hid In waiting silence, finds a form,Where elemental force has bid A great serenity out of storm. Here all imperial seraph sort, And bright ascendencies, have wrought And shaped themselves to perfect choice; And in full throbs of starry song, Wild music of the vast, along Whose verge the rolling echoes throng, These marble lips might find a voice.
Oh, like some rare and wondrous shell Of shifting hues and lustrous dyes,That takes the sun in every cell With colors that eclipse the skies, The soul for which the sculptor sought, The soul that here the sculptor caught,
