Classic Poem

Come soon, my friends, poet and painter, both.
I need you always, and my eyes are loth
To miss your gentle faces.
With idle touches on the strings and quills,
My sad lyre traces you through plains and hills,
Towns and historic places.

My music is gone with you overseas.
Oh! lute and pencil, come and give me ease,
For you have stolen my art.
I thirst for thee, thou double stream most sweet,
Alpheus and Arethuse, whose waters fleet
Met, mingled in my heart.

I watch the painter and the poet linger
In some brown street, and trace with learned finger
The ogives of a door,
Or turn delighted, at a whim, to chase
The gleam of dark eyes and a lovely face
Flashed from an upper floor.

Of the young girl, and of the ruin hoary,
Paint thou the beauty, and sing thou the story.
Love all, divine and human.
Piercing through wall and veil, your eyes can see
Within the temple closed the Deity,
And love within the woman.

My brother, my apostle! Brother and brother!
One paints the lovely universe; the other
Explains it with a word.
Each has the part he loves. Painter, the whole
Fair world for thee; poet, for thee the soul;
For each, for both, the Lord!