TWO LOVE-LOCKS
Reviving languorous dreaming
Of conquered, conquering eye,
Upon thy forehead gleaming,
Two fairest love-locks lie.
I see them softly nesting,
Of wondrous, golden sheen,
Like little wheels come resting
From car of Mab the Queen;
Or bows of Cupid ready
To let the arrows fly,
Bent circlewise and steady
For archer's mastery.
One heart have I of passion.
Yet two love-locks are thine!
O brow of fickle fashion!
Whose heart is caught with mine?
THE TEA-ROSE
Most beautiful of all the roses
Is this half-open bud, whose bare,
Unpetalled heart a dream discloses
Of carmine very faint and fair.
I wonder, was it once a white rose,
Till butterfly too ardent spoke
A language soft, and in the light rose
A shyer, warmer tint awoke?
Its delicate fabric hath the colour
Of lovely and velutinous skin.
Its perfect freshness maketh duller
Environing hues incarnadine.
For as some rare patrician features
Eclipse the brows of ruddier gleam,
So masquerade as rustic creatures
Gay sisters of this rose supreme.
But, dear one, if your hand caress it,
And raise it for its sweet perfume,
Ere yet your velvet cheek shall press it,
'T will fade before a fairer bloom.
No rose in all the world so tender,
That gloweth in the springtime fleet,
But shall its every charm surrender
Unto your seventeen years, my sweet.
A face hath more than petal's power:
A pure heart's blood that blushing flows
O'er youth's nobility, is flower
High sovereign over every rose.
CARMEN
Slender is Carmen, of lissome guise,
Her hair is black as the midnight's heart;
Dark circles are under her gypsy eyes,
Her swarthy skin is the devil's art.
The women will mock at her form and face;
But the men will follow her all the day.
Toledo's Archbishop (now save His Grace!)
Tones his mass at her knees, they say.
Nestled in warmth of her amber neck
Lies a massive coil, till she fling it down
To be a raiment to frame and deck
Her delicate body from foot to crown.
Then out from her pallid face with power
Her witching, terrible smiles compel.
Her mouth is a mystical poison-flower
That hath drawn its crimson from hearts in hell.
The haughtiest beauty must yield her fame,
When this strange vision shall dusk her sky.
For Carmen rules, and her glance's flame
Shall set the torch to satiety.
Wild, graceless Carmen!—Though yet this be,
Savour she hath of a world undreamt,
Of a world of wonder, whose salt young sea
Provoked a Venus to rise and tempt.
WHAT THE SWALLOWS SAY
AN AUTUMN SONG
The dry, brown leaves have dropped forlorn,
And lie amid the golden grass.
The wind is fresh both eve and morn.
But where are summer days, alas!
The tardy flowers the autumn stayed
For latter treasures now unfold.
The dahlia dons its gay cockade,
Its flaming cap the marigold.
Rain stirs the pool with pelt and shock.
The swallows to the roof repair,
Confabulating as they flock
And feel the winter in the air.
By hundreds gather they to vow
Their little yearnings and intents.
Saith one: "'T is fair in Athens now,
Upon the sun-warm battlements!
"Thither I go to take my nap
Upon the Parthenon high and free.
My cornice nest is in the gap
A cannon-ball made there for me."
And one: "A ceiling meets my needs
Within a Smyrna coffee-house,
Where Hadjis tell their amber beads
Upon the threshold luminous.
"I go and come above the folk,
While their chibouques their clouds upfling.
I skim along through silver smoke,
And graze the turbans with my wing."
Another: "There's a triglyph gray
On one of Baalbec's temples high.
'T is there I go to brood all day
Above my little family."
Another calleth, "My address
Is settled: 'At the Knights of Rhodes.'
In a dark colonnade's recess
I'll make the snuggest of abodes."
"Old age hath made me slow for flight,"
Declares a fifth; "I'll rest at even
On Malta's terraces of white,
Where blue sea melts to blue of heaven."
A sixth: "In Cairo is my home,
Up in a minaret's retreat:
A twig or two, a bit of loam—
My winter lodgings are complete."
A last: "The Second Cataract
Shall mark my place—the nest of brown
A granite king doth hold intact
Within the circle of his crown."
And all together sing: "What miles
To-morrow shall have stretched beneath
Our fleeing swarm:—remembered isles,
Snow peaks, vast waters, lands of heath!"
With calls and cries and beat of wings,
Grown eager now and venturesome,
The swallows hold their twitterings,
To see the blight of winter come.
And I—I understand them all,
Because the poet is a bird,—
Oh! but a sorry bird, and thrall
To a great lack, pressed heavenward.
It's Oh for wings! to seek the star,
To count the seas when day is done,
To breast the air with swallows far,
To verdant spring, to golden sun!
CHRISTMAS
Black is the sky and white the ground.
O ring, ye bells, your carol's grace!
The Child is born! A love profound
Beams o'er Him from His Mother's face.
No silken woof of costly show
Keeps off the bitter cold from Him.
But spider-webs have drooped them low,
To be His curtain soft and dim.
Now trembles on the straw downspread
The Little Child, the Star beneath.
To warm Him in His holy bed,
Upon Him ox and ass do breathe.
Snow hangs its fringes on the byre.
The roof stands open to the tryst
Of aureoled saints, that sweetly choir
To shepherds, "Come, behold the Christ!"
THE DEAD CHILD'S PLAYTHINGS
Marie comes no more at call.
She has wandered from her play.
Ah, how pitifully small
Was the coffin borne away!
See—about the nursery floor
All her little heritage:
Rubber ball and battledore,
Tattered book and coloured page.
Poor forsaken doll! in vain
Stretch your arms. She will not come.
Stopped forever is the train,
And the music-box is dumb.
Some one touched it soft, apart,
Where the silence is her name.
And what sinking of the heart
At the plaintive note that came!
Ah, the anguish! when the tomb
Robs the cradle; when bereft
We discover in the gloom
Child toys that an angel left.
AFTER WRITING MY DRAMATIC REVIEW
My columns are ranged and steady,
Upbearing, though sad forespent,
The newspaper pediment,
And my review is ready.
Now for a week, poetaster,
My door is bolted. Away,
Thou still-born masterpiece,—aye,
Till Monday I am my master.
No melodrama shall whiten
My labour with threadbare leaves.
The warp that my fancy weaves
With silken flowers shall brighten.
Brief moment my spirit's warder,
Ye voices of soul that float,
I'll hearken your sorrow's note,
Nor verses evoke to order.
Then deep in my glass regaining
The health of a day gone by,—
Old visions for company—
The bloom of my vintage draining,
The wine of my thought I'll measure,
Wine virgin of alien glow,
Grapes trodden by life, that flow
From my heart at my heart's own pleasure!
THE CASTLE OF REMEMBRANCE
Before my hearth with head low-bowed
I dream, and strive to reach again,
Across the misty past's gray cloud,
Unto Remembrance's domain,
Where tree and house and upland way
Are blurred and blue like passing ghosts,
And the eye, ponder though it may,
Consults in vain the guiding-posts.
Now gropingly to gain a sight
Of all the buried world, I press
Through mystic marge of shade and light
And limbo of forgetfulness.
But white, diaphanous Memory stands,
Where many roadways meet and spread,
Like Ariadne, in my hands
Thrusting her little ball of thread.
Henceforth the way is all secure.
The shrouded sun hath reappeared,
And o'er the trees with vision sure
I see the castle tower upreared.
Beneath the boughs where day grows dark
With shower on shower of leaves down-poured
The dear old path through moss and bark
Still lengthens far its narrow cord.
But creeping-plant and bramble-spray
Have wrought a net to daunt me now.
The stubborn branch I force away
Swings fiercely back to lash my brow.
I come upon the house at last.
No window lit with lamp or face,
No breath of smoke from gables vast,
To touch with life the mouldering place!
Bridges are crumbling. Moats are still,
And slimed with rank, green refuse-flowers,
And tortuous waves of ivy fill
The crevices and choke the towers.
The portico in moonlight wanes.
Time sculptures it to suit his whim.
And with the wash of many rains
My coloured coat of arms is dim.
The door I open eagerly.
The ancient hinges creak and halt.
A breath of dampness wafts to me
The musty odour of the vault.
The hairy nettle sharp of sting,
The coarse and broad-leafed burdock weed
In court-yard nooks are prospering,
By spreading hemlocks canopied.
Upon two marble monsters near,
That guard the mossy steps of stone,
The shadow of a tree falls clear,
That in my absence has upgrown.
Sudden the lion sentinels raise
Their paws, aggressive and malign,
And challenge me with their white gaze;
But soft I breathe the countersign.
I pass. The old dog menaceth,
But falls back hushed, the shades amid.
My resonant footstep wakeneth
Crouched echoes in their corners hid.
Through yellow panes of glass a ray
Of dubious light creeps down the hall
Where ancient tapestries display
Apollo's fortunes from the wall.
Fair tree-bound Daphne still with grace
Stretches her tufted fingers green.
But in the amorous god's embrace
She fades, a formless phantom seen.
I watch divine Apollo stand,
Herdsman to acarus-riddled sheep,
The Muses Nine, a haggard band,
Upon a faded Pindus weep;
While Solitude in scanty gown
Traces "Desertion" in the dust
That through the air she sifteth down
Upon a marble stand august.
And now, among forgotten things,
I find, like sleepers manifold,
Pastels bedimmed, dark picturings,
Young beauties, and the friends of old.
My faltering fingers lift a crape,—
And lo, my love with look and lure!
With puffing skirts and prisoned shape!
Cidalise à la Pompadour!
A tender, blossoming rose she feels
Against her ribboned bodice pressed,
Whose lace half hides and half reveals
A snowy, azure-veinèd breast.
Within her eyes gleam sparkles lush,
As on the rime-kissed, deadened leaves.
Upon her cheek a purple flush—
Death's own cosmetic hue!—deceives.
She startles as I come before,
And fixeth soft on me her eyes,
Reproachfully forevermore,
Yet with a charm and witching wise.
Life bore me from thee at its will,
Yet on my heart thy name is laid,
Thou dead delight, that lingereth still,
Bedizened for the masquerade!
Envious of Art, fair Nature wrought
To overpass Murillo's fame,—
From Andalusia here she brought
The face that lights the second frame.
By some poetical caprice,
Our atmosphere of mist and cloud,
With rare exotic charm's increase
This other Petra Camara dowed.
Warm orange tones are gilding yet
Her lovely skin of roseate hue.
Her eyelids fair have lashes jet
That beams of sunshine filter through.
There shimmers fine a pearly gleam
Between her scarlet lips elate;
Her beauty flashes forth supreme—
A bright south summer pomegranate.
Long to the sound of Spain's guitar,
I told her praise 'mid song and glass.
She came alone one evenstar,
And all my room Alhambra was.
Farther I see a robust Fair,
With strong and gem-beladen arms.
In pearls of price and velvet rare
Are set her ivory bosom's charms.
Her ennui is a weary queen's,
An adulating court amid.
Superb, aloof, her hand she leans
Upon a casket's jewelled lid.
Her sensuous lips their crimes confess,
As crimson with the blood of hearts.
With brutal, mad voluptuousness
Her conquering eye a challenge darts.
Here dwells, in lieu of tender grace,
Vertiginous allure, whereof
A cruel Venus ruled a race,
Presiding o'er malignant love.
Unnatural mother to her child,
This Venus all imperative!
O thou, my bitter joy and wild,—
Farewell forever! I forgive!
Within its frame in shadow fine,
The misty glass that still endures
Reveals another face than mine,—
The earliest of my portraitures.
A retrospective ghost, with face
Of vanished type, steps from the vast
Dim mirror of his biding-place
In tenebrous, forgotten past.
Gay in his doublet satin-rose,
Coloured in bold and vivid way,
He seems as if about to pose
For Deveria or Boulanger.
Terror of glabrous commoner,
His flowing locks in royal guise,
Like mane of lion, or sinister
King's hair, fall heavy to his thighs.
Romanticist of bold conceit,
Knight of an art which strives anew,
He hurled himself at Drama's feet,
When erst Hernani's trumpet blew.
Night falls. The corners are astir
With many shapes and shadows tall.
The Unknown—grim stage-carpenter—
Sets up its darksome frights o'er all.
A sudden burst of candles, weird
With aureoles, like lamps of death!
The room is populous, and bleared
With folk brought hither by a breath!
Down step the portraits from the wall,—
A ruddy-litten company!
Circling the fireplace in the hall,
Where the wood blazes suddenly.
The figures wrested from the tombs
Have lost their rigid, frozen mien,
The gradual glow of life illumes
The Past with flush incarnadine.
A colour lights the faces pale,
As in the days of old delight.
Friends whom my thought shall never fail,
I thank ye, that ye came to-night!
Now eighteen-thirty shows to me
Its great and valiant-hearted men.
(Ah, like Otranto's pirates, we
Who were an hundred, are but ten!)
And one his reddish beard spreads out,
Like Barbarossa in his cave.
Another his mustachio stout
Curls at the ends in fashion suave.
Under the ample fold that cloaks
An ever unrevealèd ill,
Petrus a cigarette now smokes,
Naming it "papelito" still.
Another cometh, fain to tell
His visions and his hopes supreme.
Like Icarus on the sands he fell,
Where lie all broken shafts of dream.
And one a drama hath begot,
Planned after some new model's freak,
Which, merging all things in its plot,
Makes Calderon with Molière speak.
Tom, late forsaken by his Dear,
Love's Labour's Lost must low recite;
And Fritz to Cidalise makes clear
Faust's vision of Walpurgis Night.
But dawn comes through the window free.
Diaphanous the phantoms grow.
The objects of reality
Strike through their shapes that merge and go.
The candles are consumed away.
The ember-lights no longer gleam
Upon the hearth. No thing shall stay.
Farewell, O castle of my dream!
December gray shall turn once more
The glass of Time, for all we fret!
The present enters at my door,
And vainly bids me to forget.
CAMELLIA AND MEADOW-DAISY
We praise the hot-house flowers that loom
Far from their native sun and shade,
The flaring forms that flaunt their bloom,
Like jewels under glass displayed.
With never breeze to kiss their heads,
They have their birth and live and die
On costly, artificial beds,
Beneath an ever-crystal sky.
For whomsoever idly scans,
Baring their treasures to entice,
Like fair and sumptuous courtesans,
They stand for sale at golden price.
Fine porcelain holds their gathered groups,
Or glove-clad fingers fondle them
Between the dances, till each droops
Upon a limp or broken stem.
But down amid the grass unreaped,
Shunning the curious, in repose
And silence all the long day steeped,
A little woodland daisy blows.
A butterfly upon the wing
To point the place, a casual look,
And you surprise the sweet, shy thing,
Within its calm, sequestered nook.
Beneath the blue it openeth,
Rising on slender, vernal rod,
Spreading its soul in fragrant breath
For solitude and for its God.
And proud camellias tall and white,
Red tulips in a flaming mass,
Are all at once forgotten quite,
For the small flower amid the grass.
THE FELLAH
On seeing a Water-Colour by Princess Mathilde
Caprice of brush fantastical,
And of imperial idleness,
Your fellah-sphinx presents us all
With an enigma worth the guess.
A rigid fashion, verily,
This mask, this garment, seem to us,
Intriguing with its mystery
The ball-room's every Oedipus.
Isis bequeathed her veil of old
To modern daughters of the Nile.
But through this band austere, behold,
Two stars of radiance beam and smile,—
Two stars, two eyes, two poems that spring,
The soft, voluptuous fires whereof
Resolve the riddle, murmuring:
"Lo, I am Beauty! Be thou Love!"
THE GARRET
From balcony tiles where casual cats
Sit low in wait for birds unwise,
I see the worn and riven slats
Of a poor, humble garret rise.
Now could I as an author lie,
To give you comfort as you think,
Its window I would falsify,
And frame with flowers refined and pink,
And place within it Rigolette
With her cheap looking-glass, somehow,
Whose broken glazing mirrors yet
A portion of her pretty brow;
Or Margery, her dress undone,
Her hair blown free, her tie forgot,
Watering in the pleasant sun
Her pail-encompassed garden-plot;
Or poet-youth whom fame awaits,
Who scans his verse and eyes the hills,
Or in a reverie contemplates
Montmartre with its distant mills.
Alas! my garret is no feint.
There climbeth no convolvulus.
The window with its nibbled paint
Leers filmy and unluminous.
Alike for artist and grisette,
Alike for widower and lad,
A garret—save to music set—
Is never otherwise than sad.
Of old, beneath an angle pent,
That forced the forehead to a kiss,
Love, with a folding-couch content,
To chat with Susan deemed it bliss.
But we must wad our bliss about
With cushioned walls and laces wide,
And silks that flutter in and out,
O'er beds by Monbro canopied.
This evening, to Mount Breda fled
Is Rigolette, to linger there,
And Margery, well clothed and fed,
No longer tends her garden fair.
The poet, tired of catching rimes
Upon the wing, has turned to cull
Reporter's bays, and left betimes
A heaven for an entresol.
And in the window this is all:
An ancient goody chattering,
And railing at a kitten small
That toys forever with a string.
THE CLOUD
Lightly in the azure air
Soars a cloud, emerging free
Like a virgin from the fair
Blue sea;
Or an Aphrodite sweet,
Floating upright and empearled
In the shell, about its feet
Foam-curled.
Undulating overhead,
How its changing body glows!
On its shoulder dawn hath spread
A rose.
Marble, snow, blend amorously
In that form by sunlight kissed—
Slumbering Antiope
Of mist!
Sailing unto distant goal,
Over Alps and Apennines,
Sister of the woman-soul,
It shines;
Till my heart flies forth at last
On the wings of passion warm,
And I yearn to gather fast
Its form.
Reason saith: "Mere vapour thing!
Bursting bubble! Yet, we deem,
Holds this wind-distorted ring
Our dream."
Faith declareth: "Beauty seen,
Like a cloud, is but a thought,
Or a breath, that, having been,
Is naught.
"Have thy vision. Build it proud.
Let thy soul be full thereof.
Love a woman—love a cloud—
But love!"
THE BLACKBIRD
A bird from yonder branch at dawn
Is trilling forth a joyful note,
Or hopping o'er the frozen lawn,
In yellow boots and ebon coat.
It is the blackbird credulous.
Little of calendar knows he,
Whose soul, with sunbeams luminous,
Sings April to the snows that be.
Rain sweeps in torrents unrepressed.
The Arve makes dull the Rhone with mire.
The pleasant hall retains its guest
In goodly cheer before the fire.
The mountains have their ermine on,
Each one a mighty magistrate,
And hold grave conference upon
A case of Winter lasting late.
The bird dries well his wing, and long,
Despite the rains, the mists that roll,
Insists upon his little song,
Believes in Spring with all his soul.
He softly chides the slumberous morn
For dallying so long abed,
And bids the shivering flower forlorn
Be bold, and raise aloft its head;
Behind the dark sees day that smiles,
Even as behind the Holy Rod,
When bare the altar, dim the aisles,
The child of faith beholds his God.
He trusts to Nature's purpose high,
Sure of her laws for here and now.
Who laughs at thy philosophy,
Dear blackbird, is less wise than thou!
THE FLOWER THAT MAKES THE SPRINGTIME
The chestnut trees are soon to flower
At fair Saint Jean, the villa dipped
In sun, before whose viny tower
Stretch purple mountains silver-tipped.
The little leaves that yesterday
Pressed in their bodices were seen
Have put their sober garb away,
And touched the tender twigs with green.
But vainly do the sunbeams fill
The branches with a flood of light.
The shy bud hesitateth still
To show the secret thyrse of white.
And yet the rosy peach-tree blooms,
Like some faint blush of first desire.
The apple waves a wealth of plumes,
And laughs in all its fresh attire.
To bask amid the buttercups
The timid speedwell ventures out.
Nature calls every earthling up,
And reassures each tiny sprout.
Yet I must off to other sphere!
Then please your poet, chestnuts tall,
Yea, spread ye forth without a fear
Your firework bloom fantastical!
I know your summer splendour's pride.
I've seen you standing sumptuous
In autumn's tunics purple-dyed,
With golden circlets luminous.
In winter white and crystal-crossed
Your delicate boughs I saw again,—
Like lovely traceries the frost
Limns lightly on the window-pane.
Your every garment I have known,
Ye chestnuts grand that loom aloft,—
Save one to me you've never shown,
Of young green fabric first and soft.
Ah, well, good-bye, for I must go!
Keep, then, your flowers, where'er they be.
There is another flower I know,
That makes the springtime fair for me.
Let May with all her blooms arise,
Let May with all her blooms depart!
That flower sufficeth for mine eyes,
And hath pure honey in its heart.
Let be the season where it waits,
And blue or dull be heaven's dome—
It smiles and charms and captivates,—
The precious violet of my home!
A LAST WISH
How long my soul has loved thee, love!
It is full many a year agone.
Thy spring—what charm of flowers thereof,
My winter—what wild snows thereon!
White lilacs from the land of graves
Blow near my temples. Soon enow
Thou'lt mark the pallid mass that waves
Enshadowing my withered brow.
My westering sun must speedy drop,
And disappear behind the road.
Already on the dim hill-top,
There gleams and waits my last abode.
Then from thy rosy lips let fall
Upon my lips a tardy kiss,
That in my tomb, when comes the call,
My heart may rest, remembering this.
THE DOVE
O tender, beauteous dove,
Calling such plaintive things!
Wilt serve unto my love,
And be my love's own wings?
O, but we 're like, poor heart!
Thy dear one, too, is far.
Remembering, apart,
Each weeps beneath the star.
Let not thy rosy feet
Stay once on any tower,—
I am so fain, my sweet,—
So weary turns the hour!
Forswear the palm's repose
That spreadeth over all,
And gables where the snows
Of other pinions fall.
Now fail me not, nor fear!
He dwelleth near the king.
Give him this letter, dear,
These kisses on thy wing.
Then seek again my breast,
This flaming, throbbing goal,
Then come, my dove, and rest—
But bring me back his soul!
A PLEASANT EVENING
What flurrying of rains and snows!
Now every coachman, blue of nose,
In fur and ire
Sits petrified. Oh, it were right
To spend this wild December night
Before one's fire!
The cosy chimney-corner chair
Assumes its most persuasive air.
I seem to see
Its arms held out, its voice to hear,
Beseeching like a mistress dear:
"Ah, stay with me!"
A gauze reveals the orbèd lamp,
Like a fair breast beneath a guimpe,
And drowsily
The shimmer of its light ascends,
Flushing with gold and crimson blends
The ceiling high.
The silence frames no sound of things,
Save for the pendulum that swings
Its golden disk,
And many winds that roam and weep,
Or stealthy to the hall-way sweep,
To dance and frisk.
It's ball-night at the Embassy.
My coat's limp sleeves are signalling me
To dress anon.
My waistcoat yawns. My shirt obtuse
Seems raising high its wristbands loose,
To be put on.
A narrow boot's abundant glaze
Reflects the ruddy firelight's blaze.
Have I forgot?
A glove's flat fingers span the shelf.
A thin cravat protrudes itself,
And begs a knot.
Then must I forth? But what a bore—
To seek the over-crowded door!
To fall in line
Of coaches bearing coats of arms
And haughty beauties with their charms,
Superb and fine!
To stand against a portal wide
And see the surging mass inside
Bear form on form:
Old faces, faces fresh and young,
Black coats low bodices among,—
A motley swarm!
And puffy backs that hide their red
With laces fine of costly thread
Aerial,
Dandies, diplomatists, that press,
With features dull, expressionless,
At fashion's call.
What! Brave, to win a glance of hers,
The rows of lynx-eyed dowagers!
Try undeterred
To speak the dear name of my dear,
And whisper softly in her ear
Love's little word!
Nay, but I'll not! Her eye shall heed
A letter in the flowers I'll speed.
No ball-room now!
Let Parma violets make good
Whatever be her passing mood.
They hold my vow.
Ensconced with Heine or with Taine,
Or, if I like, the Goncourts twain,
The time will go.
I'll dream, until the hour shall stir
Reality, and wait for her.
She'll come, I know.
ART
More fair the work, more strong,
Stamped in resistance long,—
Enamel, marble, song.
Poet, no shackles bear,
Yet bid thy Muse to wear
The buskin bound with care.
A fashion loose forsake,—
A shoe of sloven make,
That any foot may take.
Sculptor, the clay withstand,
That yieldeth to the hand,
Though listless heart command.
Contend till thou have wrought,
Till the hard stone have caught
The beauty of thy thought.
With Paros match thy might,
And with Carrara bright,
That guard the line of light.
Borrow from Syracuse
The bronze's stubborn use,
Wherein thy form to choose.
And with a delicate grace
In the veined onyx trace
Apollo's perfect face.
Painter, put thou aside
The transient. Be thy pride
The colour furnace-tried.
Limn thou, fantastic, free
Blue sirens of the sea,
And beasts of heraldry.
Before a nimbus gold
Transcendently uphold
The Child, the Cross foretold.
Things perish. Gods have passed.
But song sublimely cast
Shall citadels outlast.
And the forgotten seal
Turned by the plowman's steel
An emperor may reveal.
For Art alone is great:
The bust survives the state,
The crown the potentate.
Carve, burnish, build thy theme,—
But fix thy wavering dream
In the stern rock supreme.
[Transcribers notes: I have created this online text from two sources: Émaux et camées by Théophile Gautier (Paris: Charpentier, 1872), and Agnes Lee's English translation entitled Enamels and Cameos, published in Volume XXIV of The Complete Works of Théophile Gautier (Cambridge, MA: University Press, John Wilson and Son, 1903). Lee added line indentations for most of the poems which were not present in Gautier's original text, so I have not included them here. Apart from this, the online text follows Lee's translation, including her dedicatory sonnet.]