If being near the fire I burned with it, Now that its flame is quenched and doth not show, What wonder if I waste within and glow, Dwindling away to cinders bit by bit? ...
Swift through the eyes unto the heart within All lovely forms that thrall our spirit stray; So smooth and broad and open is the way That thousands and not hundreds enter in....
Swift through the eyes unto the heart within All lovely forms that thrall our spirit stray; So smooth and broad and open is the way That thousands and not hundreds enter in...
Love is not always harsh and deadly sin: If it be love of loveliness divine, It leaves the heart all soft and infantine For rays of God's own grace to enter in....
When divine Art conceives a form and face, She bids the craftsman for his first essay To shape a simple model in mere clay: This is the earliest birth of Art's embrace....
Fain would I wish what my heart cannot will: Between it and the fire a veil of ice Deadens the fire, so that I deal in lies; My words and actions are discordant still....
When that which is divine in us doth try To shape a face, both brain and hand unite To give, from a mere model frail and slight, Life to the stone by Art's free energy....
Mid weariness and woe I find some cheer In thinking of the past, when I recall My weakness and my sins, and reckon all The vain expense of days that disappear:...
Not less elate than smitten with wild woe To see not them but Thee by death undone, Were those blest souls, when Thou above the sun Didst raise, by dying, men that lay so low:...
Ye dwellers on this world, to the first Mind Exalt your eyes; and ye shall see how low Vile Tyranny, wearing the glorious show Of nobleness and worth, keeps you confined....
The Devil's not so ugly as they paint; He's well with all, compact of courtesy: Real heroism is real piety: Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint...
You sect most adverse to the good and true, Degenerate from your origin divine, Pastured on lies and shadows by the line Of Thais, Sinon, Judas, Homer! You,...
If men were happy in that age of gold, We yet may hope to see mild Saturn's reign; For all things that were buried live again, By time's revolving cycle forward rolled....
I fear that by my death the human race Would gain no vantage. Thus I do not die. So wide is this vast cage of misery That flight and change lead to no happier place....
Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope Cannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death; Shadows that fleet, and flowers that yield their breath, Match not the Love that craves infinity....