Classic Poem

Where is the Beautiful? in these sharp airs?
These skies from which God sends no pleasure down,
These hills with sad monotony of curve,
Fixed by long Winter in perpetual frown?

Or in these men and women, fashioned most
In features of an undelightful mould,
Ardent in all that shows self paramount,
Where self should melt and mingle, hard and cold.

With pitiless remembrance of the faults
That God and Time pass over leniently,
These on a brother's blemishes confer
The demon's gift of immortality.

I have seen saintly blood that, long congealed,
At some prayer-hallowed festival would melt
From deathless virtue in the heart it fed,
And latent love, forgotten ne'er, once felt.

Methought that in those drops, by fervent heat
To life and ancient charity renewed,
Were pulses, human holier than could thrill
Through the whole current of your watery blood.

Oh! sordid life — oh! conflict desperate,
Oh! comfort shredded from a scanty hand;
Oh! fainting feeble ones, who drop beside
The thorny way, and wail throughout the land.

Though I am one whom men care not to praise,
And in the ages' service make small show,
I could for you a thankless task assay,
In your defence strike many a valorous blow.

Ye asked for love — these gave you fiery zeal,
They locked your gentle souls in iron fate;
And when the breast was bared for nearer help,
They smote you with a heart impenetrate.

Come, share the freer gifts of poverty, —
Of those I have, I will refuse you none,
Upbraid you from no Stoical retreat
Of Virtue more ambitious than your own.

Take my poor treasures — they are quickly told —
A soul whose tears and laughter breathe of song;
A mournful humour, and a merry wit,
A heart that harbours no distemper long;

And higher helps, as beacons set, to guide
In this night-world, where ev'n the wisest grope,
Sisters twin-hearted, dear maternal joys,
The dead, the distant — nearer, Home and Hope.

POST SCRIPTUM

When thus I reasoned of the Beautiful
My vexed and querulous thought had not outgone
The comfort of the since instructing years.
Nor thy fair face, my last and gentlest-born.

Thou dost the Eastern paradox reverse.
Towards the far mountain-tops I could not flee,
Whereon the heavenly vision seemed to rest —
And waiting, Beauty was at home with me.