CLXV. MORE THAN TRUTH. No longer do I know if thou art fair Their thoughts, their laughter, or their foolish gaze? And in my veins a stranger blood that flows, In thee a soul which none may know for thine ? CLXVI. THE BODY FAIR. THE empty marvel of a splendid cage And dull his tuneless throat, and clipt his wing. CLXVII, LOVE AND WEARINESS. No idol thou for passion's eager will Not thine our praise; remembered not thy claim : No God with ministers of hope and fate, He came, but humbly at my heart's low gate There knocked a languid boy, a beggar maid; His limbs were wan: her tarnished golden dress Did match his faded hair. And this she said: "He is thy Love, and I am Weariness." CLXVIII. THE STUDENT'S CHAMBER. STRANGE things pass nightly in this little room, High dreams they bring that never were dreamt in sleep: These walls yawn wide to Time, to Death and Hell, To the last abyss of men's wild cries to Heaven; While night uncurtains on a sobbing deep, And lo! the land wherein the Holy Grail, In far Monsalvat, to the soul is given. CLXIX, THE LOST IDEAL OF THE WORLD. A NOVICE in the School of Paradise, I leant beside the Golden Gate one day: O God, what was She, there, without the Gate-Sad in such beauty Heav'n seemed incomplete ? Drawn by a nameless star's young whisperings, With hands stretch'd forth as if to pass by Fate She drifted on-so near Thy mercy-seat Blind, and in all the loneliness of wings! |