amid mirth and music,
The brows circled with ivy,
And the goblet at last like a gift
Thrust in the bosom of slumber.

Thus are the people of Cyprus;
Young men and old making holiday,
Decking them daintily forth
In robes of Sidonian purple:
The maidens all beauteous but wanton,
Foolishly flinging youth's gifts,
Its jewels--its richest adornment,
Like dross on the altar of pleasure;
Letting the worm of mortality
Eat out their hearts till they bear
Only the semblance of angels.

Amongst them like a gaunt and gnarled oak
Waving majestic o'er a pigmy race,
Pygmalion was; for by the mete of soul
Man ranges in the phalanx of his age.
His heart was like an ocean, tremulous
With radiant aspirations and high thoughts
That fretted ever on mortality,
Wearing life out with passion and desire,
Struggling against the limits of the flesh,
The bonds and shackles of the Possible,
That bound him, like Prometheus, to the dust,
And clogg'd the upward winging of his soul.
He walk'd 'mongst men like one who felt the strength
Of nobler nature swelling in his breast,
Eternal breathings fanning the Divine
Within him into flame and utterance.
He spake not much, for that his heaving thoughts
Yearn'd vainly for the living fire of heaven
To burn them through the soul-core of the Time;
But in the inner man the tumult sped
In burning currents, like the ruddy streams
From every pulse-beat of his o'er-fraught heart.
His soul hung in an atmosphere of grace,
And beauty, midway betwixt earth and heaven,
Revolving, like the moon through azure space,
Mid starry fancies and faint orbed dreams,
That made bright land-marks in the spirit's flight.
Faint glimmerings of loveliness untold
Flash'd ever on him in his solitudes,
Luring him on to search and far pursuit
Through empyrean altitudes of thought,
Sped onward by the god-like thirst to grasp
The spiritual, and with creative hand
Mould it to corporal reality.
Love was his guiding star--his bright ideal
Shining above all visions and all dreams,
As doth the Pole-star o'er the icy North;
Love in its broad and fineless empery
Ruling, directing all by right divine,
Pressing its seal of vassalage on thought,
And crushing passion with relentless heel;
Love--the refiner, whose alchymic art
Transmuteth very dross to purest gold,
Passing emotion t