thy delight Resolved not to be so fond As, in ephemeral gauds caparisoned, To station feet upon a world of vapour Soft as a dream and fleeting as a taper; Thou thoughtest nevertheless that thou shouldst occupy Thyself, as it seemed to thee, most worthily Until the rapid hour when thou shouldst die; So, in a world of seemings, Of shadows and of dreamings, Busied thyself to fashion and record Unto the greater glory of thy Lord, For thy proud lady Beauty His Most excellent and humble handmaid is. Says one thy service was too ceremonial, Thy vestments irised overmuch, thy ritual Too elaborate and thy rubric too obscure, Therefore thy gift of chant and orison Beneath the perfect service men have done. O but thy notes were pure, And in a day like this we now endure No fault it was in thee to set thy camp Remote, aloof, aloof, In a far fastness proof 'Gainst the mephitic odours of the swamp. Which being so, no gain 'Twere to explain An exquisiteness too meticulous; Let us but say it pleased thee thus, Dowered with imagination heavy-fruited, To raise a column garlanded and fluted For Him thy heavenly abacus. This was thine offering thou didst make In founded hope that He The craftsman's best would take Well knowing its unobscure sincerity. The cord broke and the tent Slipped and the silken roof Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament. We still in this terrene abode Forlorn must tread the difficult road, And all meek thanks and all belief Hardly suffice to rampart grief. For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic And are her temples now delivered over To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic In places hallowed by that celestial lover. Save only two or three With undivided minds like thee, None now remains that girds The peregrinal loin, None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue, But counterfeiters of her imaged coin, Iconoclasts, breakers of carven words, Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung, Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans, And pismire artisans Labouring to make Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face As might the surface of a stagnant lake. Yet we should anger not, Nor let that be forgot, The testament of stateliest worth He left us when he fled the earth. The mausoleum made of rhyme, Fair in its unfrequented field, Which shall invulnerably shield His memory to the end of Time; The house with curtain-flaming halls And roof of gold and jewelled walls For which the fisher sank his net Into the deepest pools of speech, Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet That a less venturous could not reach, The hunter tracked the metaphor On many a foamy silver coast A hundred leagues beyond the most Fabulous Tellurian shore. Magnificent he was and mild, Glad to be still and glad to speak, Daring yet delicate as a child, Faithful, 

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