A young Apollo flush’d with love and beauty,
The world shall wonder owning thy command;
Now, the boy Eros, scorning rugged duty,
And mocking forms poor custom’s sole demand:
His archness blended with his sprightly grace,
His glance of love and fitfulness and sport,
His human godhead and heaven-moulded face;
These all are mingled in thy witching port:
And, more than these, the eloquence of thy look,
The energy whose fire informs thy frame;
Well might man read thee as the favourite book,
Wherein maternal nature graves her name.
In thy humanity perfection lives,
And kills th’ ideals which rash fiction gives.