Your praise of Nero leaves me cold: Poems of porphyry and of gold, Palatial poems, chill my heart. I gaze -- I wonder -- I depart. Not to Byzantium would I roam In quest of beauty, nor Babylon; Nor do I seek Sahara's sun To blind me to the hills of home. Here am I native; here the skies Burn not, the sea I know is gray; Wanly the winter sunset dies. Wanly comes day. Yet on these hills and near this sea Beauty has lifted eyes to me, Unlustful eyes, clear eyes and kind; While a clear voice chanted -- @3"They who find "Me not beside their doorsteps, know "Me never, know me never, though "Seeking, seeking me, high and low, "Forth on the far four winds they go!"@1 Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems, Your Saracenic silver, your Nilotic gods, your diadems To bind the brows of Queens, impure, Perfidious, passionate, perfumed -- these Your petted, pagan stage-properties, Seem but as toys of trifling worth. For I have marked the naked earth Beside my doorstep yield to the print Of a long light foot, and flash with a glint Of crocus-gold -- Crocus-gold! Crocus-gold no mill may mint Save the Mill of God -- The Mill of God! The Mill of God with His angels in't! |