There is no architect Can build as the Muse can; She is skilful to select Materials for her plan; Slow and warily to choose Rafters of immortal pine, Or cedar incorruptible, Worthy her design. She threads dark Alpine forests, Or valleys by the sea, In many lands, with painful steps, Ere she can find a tree. She ransacks mines and ledges, And quarries every rock, To hew the famous adamant For each eternal block. She lays her beams in music, In music every one, To the cadence of the whirling world Which dances round the sun; That so they shall not be displaced By lapses or by wars, But, for the love of happy souls, Outlive the newest stars. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE JOY OF WRITING by WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA TO THE NIGHTINGALE by ANNE FINCH AN UNINSCRIBED MONUMENT - BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS by HERMAN MELVILLE SONNET: 18. ON THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT by JOHN MILTON STONEWALL JACKSON'S WAY by JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER SONNET: 102 by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE |