For, even there translucent thought’s deep roll,
There the slight foam but beautifies the blue,
O let me write my name along that scroll,
That mirror, varying to a lovelier hue!
Thou, like the cold world, will not e’er forget;
When thou must die, my fame shall wither too;
For what were laurels when with weeping wet?
Though fame be lost, yet love shall fly with you;
Yet nought shall perish; for one thought of thine
Hath breath’d eternity through these slight lays;
And I can dare the world’s poor scornful whine
To spoil the smoothness of thy perfect praise:
I know these strains are weak, yet love them still,
Their blind obedience only owns thy will.
CIX.
Fame, slowly staggering, toils up hard ascents,
The summit reached, she beckons, proudly poised;
Life struggles out through inapparent vents;
Fame’s former glory is less loudly noised:
Death calls, and fame revives, then sudden dies,
Or, smouldering, stinks along the restless years;
Life’s various hoard, fed by such quick supplies,
Heeds not the fanes of bygone mirth or tears;
The years, that build the shadows, make them dim;
The busy world’s scarce conscious of itself;
Already toying on oblivion’s brim,
It prays for heirs to waste much useless pelf.
Who have not time to assure their own weak ways,
How should they pause o’er their ancestors’ praise?
CX.
But, the spirit, enamoured of immortal Beauty,
He will not serve on fame’s light grudging meed;
His grateful labour, merg’d in sublime duty,
Seeks, in creation, harvest of its seed;
Beauty is his dear Lord, he loves to owe,
And grows more rich by payment; he will toil,
And watch his offspring, as they grander grow,
Outdoing Nature in their beauteous coil.
And all alone he feels, yet is not sad,
For She, the inspirer of all hearts, is near;
And Nature’s fondness makes her son look glad,
And will not, wholly, let his heart grow sear.
The artificer of the Changeless grows not tired,
He is well paid, nor cares to be admired.
CXI.
Ye spirits, whose soaring vivified your plumes;
Whose godlike names swell man’s adoring breath;
Whose glory, time, nor space, nor hate consumes;
Ministers of love, whose virtue conquers death;
Such love of Beauty for its own dear sake,
Resident in the soul, the mind, the form,
Only could inspire what ye dared undertake,
And bear ye, conquerors, through the mist and storm:
Great humanisers of the world, fusing your merit
Through the inattentive cycles of the years;
Most know not the profusion they inherit,
So hath your spirit impregnated men’s tears:
Severing what Gordian knots of mysteries,
Love echoes Christ, Spinoza, Socrates!