ings to cover
Porphyria's lover,
Pompilia's wrong.

Long thoughts were started,
When youth departed
From the half-hearted
Riccardi's bride;
For, saith your fable,
Great Love is able
To slip the cable
And take the tide.

Or truth compels us
With Paracelsus,
Till nothing else is
Of worth at all.
Del Sarto's vision
Is our own mission,
And art's ambition
Is God's own call.

Through all the seasons,
You gave us reasons
For splendid treasons
To doubt and fear;
Bade no foot falter,
Though weaklings palter,
And friendships alter
From year to year.

Since first I sought you,
Found you and bought you,
Hugged you and brought you
Home from Cornhill,
While some upbraid you,
And some parade you,
Nine years have made you
My master still.

SHAKESPEARE HIMSELF: FOR THE UNVEILING
OF MR. PARTRIDGE'S STATUE
OF THE POET.

The body is no prison where we lie
Shut out from our true heritage of sun;
It is the wings wherewith the soul may fly.
Save through this flesh so scorned and spat upon,
No ray of light had reached the caverned mind,
No thrill of pleasure through the life had run,
No love of nature or of humankind,
Were it but love of self, had stirred the heart
To its first deed. Such freedom as we find,
We find but through its service, not apart.
And as an eagle's wings upbear him higher
Than Andes or Himalaya, and chart
Rivers and seas beneath; so our desire,
With more celestial members yet, may soar
Into the space of empyrean fire,
Still bodied but more richly than before.

The body is the man; what lurks behind
Through it alone unveils itself. Therefore
We are not wrong, who seek to keep in mind
The form and feature of the mighty dead.
So back of all the giving is divined
The giver, back of all things done or said
The man himself in elemental speech
Of flesh and bone and sinew uttered.

This is thy language, Sculpture. Thine to reach
Beneath all thoughts, all feelings, all desires,
To that which thinks and lives and loves, and teach
The world the primal selfhood of its sires,
Its heroes and its lovers and its gods.
So shall Apollo flame in marble fires,
The mien of Zeus suffice before he nods,
So Gautama in ivory dream out
The calm of Time's untrammelled periods,
So Sigurd's lips be in themselves a shout.

Mould us our Shakespeare, sculptor, in the form
His comrades knew, rare Ben and all the rout
That found the taproom of the Mermaid warm
With wit and wine and fellowship, the face