And on that crocus-coloured brow
Cherish the truth men disavow
In all the insatiate lust and strife
Of restless movement and roaring life,
Burning a beacon to deliver,
Beauty, to hands that stone the giver
Or slay the soul.”
Cherish the truth men disavow
In all the insatiate lust and strife
Of restless movement and roaring life,
Burning a beacon to deliver,
Beauty, to hands that stone the giver
Or slay the soul.”
He dreamed a space:
“In all the press I saw one face,
I saw one face alone that drew
Mine, as the sunlight drinks the dew,
Mine, as when in the domed night glows
A fiery star on fierier snows;
Brief as the curvèd evening wind
When the horned ivory moon swings blind,
And faint nectareous roses each
Climb to the sun they dare not reach....
I heard him cry with eyes of light,
‘Be frozen, O Hermaphrodite!
May to thy veiled and living veins,
Whither this fever floods and rains,
Nothing but chill and silence come;
Let now thy singing lips grow dumb.
Henceforth be marble and be free,
Save in thine antique agony,
When in this bitter, murmuring gyve
Thou dreamest that thou still dost live.
“In all the press I saw one face,
I saw one face alone that drew
Mine, as the sunlight drinks the dew,
Mine, as when in the domed night glows
A fiery star on fierier snows;
Brief as the curvèd evening wind
When the horned ivory moon swings blind,
And faint nectareous roses each
Climb to the sun they dare not reach....
I heard him cry with eyes of light,
‘Be frozen, O Hermaphrodite!
May to thy veiled and living veins,
Whither this fever floods and rains,
Nothing but chill and silence come;
Let now thy singing lips grow dumb.
Henceforth be marble and be free,
Save in thine antique agony,
When in this bitter, murmuring gyve
Thou dreamest that thou still dost live.
32
