Classic Poem

My gallery sleeps aloof,
Soft-lighted through the roof,
Enshrining pictures old,
And statues pure and cold,
The gems of Art, when Art was in her Age of Gold!
Not picked from any single age or clime,
Nor one peculiar master, school, or tone;
Select of all, the best of all alone,
The garnered excellence of Earth and Time:
Food for all thoughts and fancies, grave or gay;
Suggestive of old lore, and poets' themes;
These filled with shapes of waking life and day,
And those with spirits, and the world of dreams.
Let me draw back the curtains, one by one,
And give their muffled brightness to the sun:

THE PICTURES .

Helen and Paris on their bridal night,
Under the swinging cressets' starry light,
With hoary Priam and his sons around,
Feasting in all their majesty and bloom,
Filling their golden cups with eager hands,
To drink a health, while pale Cassandra stands
In prophecy, with raven locks unbound,
Her soul o'ershadowed by the coming doom.

Andromache, with all her tearful charms,
Folded upon the mighty Hector's breast,
And the babe shrinking in its Nurse's arms,
Affrightened by the nodding of his crest.

The giant Cyclops, sitting in his cave,
Helped by divine Ulysses, old and wise,
Spilling the wine in rivers down his beard,
While swart Silenus, sly and cunning knave,
Leers o'er his shoulder, reassured and cheered,
Stealing a swollen skin with twinkling eyes.
Anacreon, lolling in the myrtle shades,
Bibbing his Teian draughts with rich delight,
Pledging the dancing girls and Cyprian maids,
Pinching their little ears, and shoulders white.

A cloudless sunrise on the glittering Nile,
Gilding the Sphinx and temples on the shore,
And robed priests, that toss their censers, while,
Abased in dust, the populace adore;
A beaked galley fretting at its curb,
With reedy oars, and masts, and silken sails,
And Cleopatra walks the deck superb,
Slow-followed by her court in shining veils.

The Virgin Mother, and the Holy Child,
Holding a globe and sceptre, sweet and mild;
The Magi bring their gifts with reverend looks,
And the rapt Shepherds lean upon their crooks.

A courtly summer fête in shady bowers;
Bowing gallants, with plumed caps in hand,
And ladies with guitars on banks of flowers,
And merry rustics dancing in a band.

A bleak defile, a pass in mountains deep,
Whose whitened summits wear their morning glow,
And dark banditti winding down the steep
Of shelvy rocks, pointing their guns below.

A harvest scene, a vineyard on the Rhine;
Arbors, and wreathed screens, and laughing swains
Pouring their crowded baskets into wains,
And vats, and trodden presses gushing wine.

A Flemish Tavern: boors and burghers hale
Drawn round a table, o'er a board of chess,
Smoking their heavy pipes, and drinking ale,
Blowing from tankard brims the frothiness.

A picture of Cathay, a justice scene;
Pagodas, statues, and a group around,
And, in his sedan chair, the Mandarin,
Reading the scroll of laws to prisoners bound,
Bambooed with canes, and writhing on the ground.
And many more whose veils I will undraw
Some other day, exceeding rare and fine;
And statues of the Grecian gods divine,
In all their various moods of love and awe:
The Phidian Jove, with calm, creative face,
Broodingin thought above the deeps of Space;
Imperial Juno, Mercury winged-heeled,
Lit with a message, Mars with helm and shield,
Apollo with the discus, bent to throw,
The piping Pan, and Dian with her bow,
And Cytherea just risen from the swell
Of crudded foam, half-stooping on her knee,
Wringing her dripping tresses in the sea,
Whose loving billows climb the curved shell
Tumultuously, and o'er its edges flow,
And kiss with pallid lips her nakedness of snow!