The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes)

Criticism, whatever may be its pretensions, never does more than to define the impression which is made upon it at a certain moment by a work wherein the writer himself noted the impression of the world which he received at a certain hour.
Sad hours and glad hours, and all hours, pass over; One thing unshaken stays: Life, that hath Death for spouse, hath Chance for lover; Whereby decays
Each thing save one thing:—mid this strife diurnal Of hourly change begot, Love that is God-born, bides as God eternal, And changes not;—
Nor means a tinseled dream pursuing lovers Find altered by-and-bye, When, with possession, time anon discovers Trapped dreams must die,—
For he that visions God, of mankind gathers One manlike trait alone, And reverently imputes to Him a father's Love for his son.

Les Dieux, qui trop aiment ses faceties cruelles —PAUL VERVILLE.
In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea, And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree:—
Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin; He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within:
So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf, Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself.
Yet some have the Gods forgotten,—or is it that subtler mirth The Gods extort of a certain sort of folk that cumber the earth?
For this is the song of the double-soul, distortedly two in one,— Of the wearied eyes that still behold the fruit ere the seed be sown, And derive affright for the nearing night from the light of the noontide sun.