ach
The chisel knowledge of all loveliness,
That wrought upon the snowy Parian,
Shall give investiture of life's pure part,
Grace, ease, and motion's unexerted power.
Better no soul than one debauched and foul,
And shaming beauty with eternal blots;
Therefore my creature shall be beautiful
With all that makes up woman's excellence;
Youth's bloom imprinted on her gentle charms,
And tenderness set playing on her lips,
Whilst round her gracious presence for a robe
Shall float the vesture of pure modesty;
A woman, she, save in the fallen soul,
A spotless angel framed, but spiritless;
This being shall I mould, and with my love
Animate to ideal consciousness,
Then let her sisterhood pass humbled on,
Unheeded in the depth of my content."

PART II.

THE WORKER.

Forth went he from the ebb and flow of men,
Whose busy vortex drowneth quiet thought,
To hold communion with wise Nature's soul
In solitude. Amongst lone woods he roamed,
Listing the murmurs of the swaying boughs
That quivered with the spirit of the breeze,
Threading their arched aisles with solemn heart,
And hiving in his soul a myriad thoughts
That fell unseen upon him. Oft he stood
On mountain fronts, and gazed long hours away,
Tracing the sweep of hill and dale, now veined
With glistening waters, and now dark with groves,
Still changing till sight lost identity,
And the ideal and the real met.
He saw the sun enter the golden gates
Of Night, that closed upon his radiant path,
And left Earth wondering; and star by star
Unlid their shining orbs, and o'er heaven's plain
Wheel their bright cars to greet him in the East.
He saw the morn break beautiful and pure,
Like virgin from her slumbers, and robe earth
In dewy brightness, cresting the far hills
With glorious halos of oncoming day.
All loveliness of earth and sky he sought,
And pondered with a heart attent to learn,
Knowing that Beauty, like a parent stream,
Is nourished by each trickling rill that flows
Into it; and the soul that would be apt
To work its highest counsels out, must toil
Through long apprentice-ship to mastery,
By units gath'ring fitness for the whole.

Thus did he, till with spirit brimming up
With glorious inspiration, he returned,
And set the god-like in him to create;
His swelling soul grew patient to the work,
Wise with the sense of innate potency,
And on the