BEFORE my tale of days is told, O may I watch, on reverent knees, The Unknown Beauty once unfold The magic of her mysteries! Before I die, O may I see, Clasp'd in her violet girdle, Spring; May April breezes blow to me Songs that the youngest poets sing! Old eyes are dull to sights unseen, Old ears are dull to songs unsung, But if the heart stay warm and green, Perchance the senses may keep young. Howe'er it be, I will not quail To tell the lapse of years like sand; My faith in beauty shall not fail Because I fail to understand. New arts, new raptures, new desires Will stir the new-born souls of men; New fingers smite new-fashioned lyres, -- And O! may I be listening then. The centaur crashes thro' the wood, And shoots his arrow there and thus: Shall I prefer my solitude Because his form be fabulous? Shall I reject the green and rose Of opals, with their shifting flame, Because the classic diamond glows With lustre that is still the same? Change is the pulse of life on earth; The artist dies, but Art lives on; New rhapsodies are ripe for birth When every rhapsodist seems gone. So, if I pray for length of days, It is not in the barren pride That looks behind itself, and says, "The Past alone is deified!" Nay, humbly, shrinkingly, in dread Of fires too splendid to be borne, -- In expectation lest my head Be from its Orphic shoulders torn, -- I wait, till, down the eastern sky Muses, like Maenads in a throng, Sweep my decayed traditions by, In startling tones of unknown song. So, to my days' extremity, May I, in patience infinite, Attend the beauty that must be, And, though it slay me, welcome it. |