When, all unswayed by passion, or by thought,
When love nor care disturb’d thy even breast,
How dropp’d the golden words, with wisdom fraught,
Like the light flashing on Athena’s crest!
Here, by this stream, that wantons by this willow,
(By such a stream, the sage beguiled the day,
Wooing with mellifluous words the crisping billow,)
Thy sweetest art compels the grave to gay;
Ah! me, the words have lost the charm they ow’d
To disposition, nature, eloquence, tone;
The gesture, that from o’erwrought feeling flow’d,
The music of the voice, is all thine own;
And the poor tenement of a troubled brain
Confuses all, and cannot much retain.
XXIX.
Beauty, a thing of nought, the sages say,
But relative to sense, blood, pulse, ear, eye;
The mockery of life, fool nature’s play,
Who trifles kingdoms on a wanton’s sigh;
It lives not in the object it endues,
It takes its colour from the lover’s breast;
Yet ’tis not there, it flits between, and wooes
Existence unexplained, and ne’er exprest:
Steal from it colour, smoothness, odour, shape,
The empty phantom who would care to clasp?
It plays its gambols, a fantastic ape,
Deriding those, who for its presence gasp;
Even the form exists not, all things lie
’Twixt outward nothing, inward mystery.
XXX.
’Tis a fond creed, and drags into the stream
Truth, who sits by, and varies with the wave;
But fate decrees, that still the froward dream
Shall enthrall nature, and dig pride his grave:
If the form change, and colour be the dye
Of the sun’s brilliance breathing through the air;
If men still vary, and if all things fly,
Shifting from real base to seeming fair;
If truth should seem to change and God to stain
His snowy vesture in the winnowing years;
Yet, something godlike ever shall remain,
This well I know, confirm it, O ye spheres;
Yet, beauty’s form shall beckon, and inspire,
Exalting earth with its spiritual fire.
XXXI.
O reason, best ally, and first assistant,
Of beauty, wandering in his own sweet maze;
Arise, great empress, and dear spirit ministrant,
O glance thy sunshine, quickening this foul haze;
If beauty knows to conquer human hearts,
Lurking in virtue, wisdom, face or form,
Or sanctifying success in nature’s parts,
In the blue heaven, on earth, in calm or storm,
Declare its essence; by what power it bends
Each stubborn element to its strong hint:
Is this too hard? then whither beauty tends;
Assure at least divine its fateful dint:
Give some rich medicine that may scorn its hold,
And frothing warm the chalice; here all’s cold.