Beauty gone, and beauty gone, And gallant wisdom lost -- Growns the race so hardly won, Twines of phantom frost! Sappho and Empedocles, Time's kleptomaniac clan Coffers their gold where golden sleep Knossos and Yucatan. Dreams that found their way in stone, Cool mesmerists of peace, Or flushed to plumage in a song, Or crimsoned Parian Greece, Loveliness dissuaded from The locked and stubborn air -- What rifling of the golden urn, Our ransom from despair! Learn again, and lose again, Create, and then destroy -- For knowledge is the race's game And loveliness its toy. |