THE VENUS OF MILO

WHAT

WHAT art thou? Woman? Goddess? Aphrodite? Yet never such as thou from the cold foam Of ocean, nor from cloudy heaven might come, Who wast begotten on her bridal-night In passionate Earth's womb by Man's delight, When man was young. I cannot trace in thee Time's handiwork. Say, rather, where is he For whom thy face was red which is so white? Thou standest ravished, broken, and thy face Is writ with ancient passions. Thou art dumb To my new love. Yet, whatsoe'er of good, Of crime, of pride, of passion, or of grace In woman is, thou, woman, hast in sum! Earth's archetypal Eve! All Womanhood.

WH

INTER was not unkind because uncouth; His prison'd time made me a closer guest, And gave thy graciousness a warmer zest, Biting all else with keen and angry tooth: And bravelier the triumphant blood of youth Mantling thy cheek its happy home possest, And sterner sport by day put strength to test, And custom's feast at night gave tongue to truth.

Or

say hath flaunting summer a device

To match our midnight revelry, that rang

With steel and flame along the snow-girt ice?
Or when we hark't to nightingales that sang

On dewy eves in spring, did they entice
To gentler love than winter's icy fang?

O

WEARY pilgrims, chanting of your woe,

That turn your eyes to all the peaks that shine, Hailing in each the citadel divine

The which ye thought to have enter'd long ago;
Until at length your feeble steps and slow
Falter upon the threshold of the shrine,
And your hearts overburden'd doubt in fine
Whether it be Jerusalem or no:

Dishearten'd pilgrims, I am one of you;
For, having worshipp'd many a barren face,
I scarce now greet the goal I journey'd to:
I stand a pagan in the holy place;

Beneath the lamp of truth I am found untrue,
And question with the God that I embrace.

T

HE world comes not to an end: her city-hives

Swarm with the tokens of a changeless trade, With rolling wheel, driver and flagging jade,

Rich men and beggars, children, priests and wives. New homes on old are set, as lives on lives; Invention with invention overlaid:

But still or tool or toy or book or blade

Shaped for the hand, that holds and toils and strives.

The men to-day toil as their fathers taught,
With little better'd means; for works depend
On works and overlap, and thought on thought:
And thro' all change the smiles of hope amend
The weariest face, the same love changed in nought:
In this thing too the world comes not to an end.

WILL be what God made me, nor protest
Against the bent of genius in my time,
That science of my friends robs all the best,
While I love beauty, and was born to rhyme.
Be they our mighty men, and let me dwell
In shadow among the mighty shades of old,
With love's forsaken palace for my cell;

Whence I look forth and all the world behold.

And say, These better days, in best things worse, This bastardy of time's magnificence,

Will mend in fashion and throw off the curse,

To crown new love with higher excellence.
Curs'd tho' I be to live my life alone,
My toil is for man's joy, his joy my own.