The mingled voices, like a poet's rhyme, Link with their music pensiveness and joy: Yet each has meaning in its wayward time: The wind of freedom sings in every clime, The bee, that labour's sweetness cannot cloy, And life is measured by the warning chime. 

 

 

 Vénus de Milo 

 Immortal beauty, touched by fire divine That glows as in thy pristine days, I see The white-robed priests and virgins joyfully Bearing their gifts of honey, flowers and wine, With sounding reed and timbrel, to thy shrine, Whilst thou, impassive, waitest the decree Of heaven, to speak with cold solemnity That which unfolds a deity's design. Gone are the gods and heroes of the past To shine in distant stars with pallid gleam, Subdued and faint beyond the darkness vast, Their power forgot, their glory overcast; Yet thou remainest in thy grace supreme And fadeless splendour that was ne'er surpassed. 

 

 

 Fire 

 To man primeval, the bright god of day Seemed lord of all things, and he bent the knee, To adoration moved unconsciously; And lo! the instinct which had made him pray, Showed him the mystic fire that latent lay Within the drying branches of the tree And brought the earth, in all its purity, The essence of the sun's benignant ray. Of Nature's elements the most refined, Free from pollution and corruption dire, Art thou, O strong and changeless spirit kind. Unfailing source of good, thou wast designed To be the first, man's reverence to inspire, And light the pathway of his groping mind. 

 

 FINIS 

 

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