Collected Works (Vol. III)

II2 RODIN IN RIME Nor in the solitary woe (The silent, the unwitting strain) Forget the miracles that grow In the austerely ordered brain! Darwin and Taine, Descartes and Boyle, Inscribe thou on the Tower of Toil! Those who have striven to limn the mind, Paint, model, tune, or hymn the light, Their vision of the world refined By mastery of superior sight : Honour their might! the gain have these Of all men’s woes and ecstasies ! High soul; no benediction seek From any spirit but our own ! Crown not the mighty with the weak! The Tower be a Tower, and not a Throne! In man-carved stone the endless coil Arise untopped, the Tower of Toil ! Deem not that prayer or sacrifice Will ever cause the work to end! Serene, sufficient, let it rise Alone ; it doth not ask a friend, Nor shall it bend a fatuous knee To a fantastic deity. What crest or chrism were so good To work as Art, the crown upon Work’s brow? Thy will with love endued Lift up this loftier Parthenon| Thine art the consecrative oil To hallow us the Tower of Toil ! LA BELLE HEAULMIERE. AGE and despair, poverty and distress Bend down the head that once was blithe and fair. Embattled toward the ancient armouress Age and despair! Where is the force of youth? The beauty where? What two-edged memory of some lost caress Lurks in the sorrowful pose and _ lingers theree Sorceress, What the harvest O melancholy mother! No more enchantress ! rare Sprung from the seed of youth and happiness ? Age and despair, FEMME ACCROUPIE SWIFT and subtle and thin are the arrows otf Art: I strike through the gold of the skin to the gold of the heart. As you sit there mighty in bronze I adore the twist Of the miracle ankle gripped by the miracle wrist. I adore the agony-lipped and the tilted head, And I pay black orisons to the breasts aspread In multiple mutable motion, whose soul is hid. And the toils of confused emotion the Master bid Lurk in the turn of the torso for poets to see Is hid from the lesser and dull-—hidden from me, She squats, and is void and null ; I know her not 5 As God is above, but more so, she sits, to blot Intelligence out of my brain, conceit from my ken ; And I class myself, idle and vain, with the newspaper men. CARYATIDE SHALL beauty avail thee, Caryatid, crouched, crushed by the weight of a world of woe ? By birthright the burden is thine: on thy shoulders the sorrow hath slid From the hand of the Healer: behold, in the steady, continuous throe, Shall beauty avail thee, Caryatid ?