The Deathless
What charlatans in this later day
Beat at the gates of Art!
Each with his trick of speech or brush,—
Forgetting, that apart
From all the brawling of an age,
Its feverish fantasy,
She waits, who only unto Time
The soul of Art sets free!
God’s handmaid Beauty,—whose touch rounds
A dewdrop or a world,—
God-sprung when first through Chaos’ night
The morning wings unfurled;
Beauty,—who still the secret gives
Whispered the ages through,—
Recurrent as the flush of dawn,
Essential as the dew.
O babblers of some surer guide!—
Knowledge goes changing by;
Caprice may bloom its little hour,
And creeds are born and die;
Still Melos on her worshippers
Looks with calm-lidded eyes;
Still Helen, though Troy sleeps in dust,
Smiles through the centuries;
Still she who gleaned on Judah’s plain
Love in her sheaves doth bind;
Still, down the glades of Arden, dance
The feet of Rosalind.