Classic Poem

I

( Relative )

How many are the forms that beauty shows;
 To what dim shrines of sweet, forgotten art
She calls; on what wide seas her strong wind blows
 The proud and perilous passion of the heart!
How many are the forms of her decay;
 The blood that stains the dying of the sun,
The love and loveliness that pass away
 Like roses' petals scattered one by one.
But there shall issue through the ivory gate,
 Amid a mist of dreams, one dream-come-true,
Beauty immortal, mighty of estate,
 The beauty that a poet loved in you;
The goodness God has set as aureole
Upon the naked meekness of your soul.

II

( Absolute )

W HO shall take Beauty in her citadel?
 Her gates will splinter not to battering days;
Her slender spires can bear the onslaught well.
 Shall any track her through her secret ways
To snare the pinions of the golden bird?
 A feather falling through the jewelled air,
Only the echo of a lovely word—
 Nowhere her being is, and everywhere.
But one may come at last through many woes
 And pain and hunger to his resting place,
The watered garden of the Mystic Rose,
 The contemplation of the Bruisèd Face—
The quest of all his wild, adventurous pride;
And, seeing Beauty, shall be satisfied.