XCII.
I care not to mark out where Beauty lies,
What nice distinction claims it for her own;
Some intuition says it never dies,
Born of young joy, by feeling larger grown:
’Twere easy, to cull out fine tints, deep shades,
To trick comparisons into the vain verse;
Digging the ground, with intellect’s keen spades,
To touch more nearly something which is worse:
O too close strainers of the priceless wine,
The essence flies with what ye deem the dregs!
The jewel’s blaze, less lustrous in the mine,
Commands, there, praise, which, capp’d on age, it begs:
One stroke of Nature, and of Truth outweighs
All similes and suits, bedizening lays.
XCIII.
But who knows Nature, Truth, Beauty divine,
(Three varying names of one unswerving Love),
Speechless will worship, and attend the trine:
The critic hawk shall own the stronger dove;
For, admiration glows with brighter flame,
Than but to light the judgment to his prey;
And it was ever Love’s most glorious shame,
He could not analyze, nor mutter nay:
Enough, that beauty lives in clouds of colour,
In forest, ocean, mountain, forms and faces;
Why wrest these proofs, to hints and motes of dolour,
To impose some sense that shrouds what it defaces?
How vain is man, who deems his weak conceits
Of better worth than Nature’s utmost heats.
XCIV.
There are, whose life, perch’d on a ledge of grief,
Scarcely can draw some comfort from its tears;
That thought probes not sensation, their relief,
Else how could Nature pant through such long years?
These may drink in the smile which Nature weaves
O’er all her sons alike, the proud, the poor;
They, oft, shall catch a solace from the sheaves
Of golden light, that pave heaven’s evening floor;
Nature has own’d her children, as they have smil’d,
Rapt in the glancing fields, where ocean ripples,
And hush’d them, as some mother, to her child
Gently discloses her just budded nipples!
I think, long years, long woes, hard times, forgot,
They stand inspired, nor dream of their sad lot.