FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   >>  
r wares, And sell us the one joy for which we wait. Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, With the last coin of sorrow purchased cheap, But now we stand before thy shadowy pale, And all our longings lie within thy keep-- Death, can it be the years shall naught avail? "Not so," Death answered, "they shall purchase sleep." CHARTRES. I. IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom, The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core, Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or, Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom, And stamened with keen flamelets that illume The pale high-altar. On the prayer-worn floor, By surging worshippers thick-thronged of yore, A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb, The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea-- For these alone the finials fret the skies, The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free, While from the triple portals, with grave eyes, Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity, The cloud of witnesses still testifies. II. The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatize The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold. A rigid fetich in her robe of gold The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes, Enthroned beneath her votive canopies, Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold. The rest is solitude; the church, grown old, Stands stark and gray beneath the burning skies. Wellnigh again its mighty frame-work grows To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn From hot humanity's impatient woes; The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn, And in the east one giant window shows The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn. LIFE. LIFE, like a marble block, is given to all, A blank, inchoate mass of years and days, Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays Some shape of strength or symmetry to call; One shatters it in bits to mend a wall; One in a craftier hand the chisel lays, And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia's gaze, Carves it apace in toys fantastical. But least is he who, with enchanted eyes Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be, Muses which god he shall immortalize In the proud Parian's perpetuity, Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies That the night
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   >>  



Top keywords:
beneath
 

chisel

 

mighty

 
burning
 
Wellnigh
 
Parian
 

ridged

 

mountain

 

impatient

 

humanity


nature
 
withdrawn
 

perpetuity

 

church

 

Enthroned

 

punctual

 

votive

 

canopies

 

Pillar

 

Virgin


fetich
 

Gathers

 

twilight

 
solitude
 

meagre

 
remnant
 
Stands
 

window

 

symmetry

 

strength


shatters

 

essays

 
enchanted
 
Lesbia
 

Carves

 
fantastical
 

craftier

 

Filled

 

visions

 

immortalize


coldness

 

roseate

 
marble
 

Whence

 
ardent
 
shapes
 

inchoate

 

Tranquil

 
purchase
 

CHARTRES