Classic Poem

Year after year
The stubborn rock with wasting steel I hew,
And when at last, grudging, it yields to view
Dimly an outline there, a feature here,
The vision, still benighted, will not dawn
Out of the stone wherein it lurks withdrawn.

Foredoomed to fail!
Not mine, alas! not mine to slip the veil
Of sudden beauty dizzying sense and soul;
At best I leave behind me but a scroll
That reads: “Here passed by one who in the block
Saw beauty prisoned, but could not ope the lock.”

Yet I have guessed,
Dreamt, willed, a stone all panting for the stroke
Should free the winged beauty in its breast,
Meeter for soul than ever flesh awoke,
And still outrunning hand and thought and dream,—
Until I swooned, irradiate with its gleam.

But morn by morn
Fate thrusts me back before my flinty block.—
O God! if Earth had never yielded rock,
But only dust for mockery and scorn!—
Then welcome, Flint! and be our benison:
“Beauty half seen is more than all else won.”