Toil on, poor muser, to attain that goal
Where Art conceals its grandest, noblest prize;
Count every tear that dims your aching eyes,
Count all the years that seem as days, and roll
The death-tides slowly on; count all your sighs;
Search the wide, wondrous earth from pole to pole,
Tear unbelief from out your martyred soul;
Succumb not,...
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From “The Contrivances”
GENTEEL in personage,
Conduct, and equipage,
Noble by heritage,
Generous and free:
Brave, not romantic;
Learned, not pedantic;
Frolic, not frantic;
This must he be.
Honor maintaining,
Meanness disdaining,
Still entertaining.
Engaging and new.
Neat, but not... -
"How the shadow the Ideal throws before it
darkens the actual." -- Zanoni
"La vie est un sommeil, l'amour en est le rêve;."
A sad, sweet dream; it fell upon my soul
When song and thought first woke their echoes there,
Swaying my...I've met thee, whom I dared not hope to meet,
Save in the enchanted land of my day-dreams:
Yes, in this common world, this waking state,
Thy living presence on my vision beams --
Life's dream embodied in reality,
And in thine eyes I read indifference to me!...Taking up the fair Ideal,
Just to cast her down
When a fracture — we discover —
Or a splintered Crown —
Makes the Heavens portable —
And the Gods — a lie —
Doubtless — "Adam" — scowled at Eden —
For his perjury!
Cherishing — our pool Ideal —
Till in purer dress...