Art

Everything passes—Robust art Alone is eternal. The bust Survives the city. 1

If I could dwell Where Israfel 1 Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting, And our hearts, though stout and brave, Still, like muffled drums, are beating Funeral marches to the grave.

Since when was genius found respectable?

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity; Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew— The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

O Attic shape! Fair attitude!

Forever piping songs forever new.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter.

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape?

Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

Chameleons feed on light and air: Poets’ food is love and fame.

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 6 Where burning Sappho loved and sung.

Think you, if Laura had been Petrarch’s wife, He would have written sonnets all his life?

With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots, Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots.

As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Scorn not the sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honors; with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart.

A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company.

The harvest of a quiet eye.

Create, artist! Do not talk!

Who wants to understand the poem Must go to the land of poetry; Who wishes to understand the poet Must go to the poet’s land.

On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting; ’Twas only that when he was off he was acting.