From out the web of former lives,
The ancient catenated chain
Of joy and sorrow, loss and gain,
One certain truth my heart derives:--
Though Beauty passes, this I know,
From Change and Death, this verity:
Her spirit lives eternally--
'Tis but her forms that come and go.
V
Lo! I am Beauty's constant thrall,
Must ever on her voice await,
And follow through the maze of Fate
Her luring, strange and mystical.
Obedient to her summonings,
Forever must my soul aspire,
And seek, on wings of lyric fire,
To penetrate the Heart of Things,
Wherein she sits, augustly throned,
In loveliness that renders dumb--
The Essence and the final Sum--
With peril and with wonder zoned
What though I fail, my duller sense
Baffled as by a wall of stone?
The high desire, the search alone
Are their own prize and recompense.