Enamels and Cameos and other Poems

CONTENTS

THE GOD AND THE OPAL TO THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
Gray caught he from the cloud, and green from earth, And from a human breast the fire he drew, And life and death were blended in one dew. A sunbeam golden with the morning's mirth, A wan, salt phantom from the sea, a girth Of silver from the moon, shot colour through The soul invisible, until it grew To fulness, and the Opal Song had birth.
And then the god became the artisan. With rarest skill he made his gem to glow, Carving and shaping it to beauty such That down the cycles it shall gleam to man, And evermore man's wonderment shall know The perfect finish, the immortal touch.
Agnes Lee.

PREFACE
When empires lay riven apart, Fared Goethe at battle time's thunder To fragrant oases of art, To weave his Divan into wonder.
Leaving Shakespeare, he pondered the note Of Nisami, and heard in his leisure The hoopoe's weird monody float, And set it to soft Orient measure.
As Goethe at Weimar delayed And dreamed in the fair garden closes, And, questing in sun or in shade, With Hafiz plucked redolent roses,—
I, closed from the tempest that shook My window with fury impassioned, Sat dreaming, and, safe in my nook, Enamels and Cameos fashioned.