NEEDLE. Ye ghosts of gods Egyptian, Ye giant shades of RA and TUM, If murmurs of our planet come To exiles in the precincts wan Where, fetish or Olympian, To help or harm no more ye list, Look down, if look ye may, and scan This monument in London mist! Behold, the hieroglyphs are dumb That once were read of him that ran When seistron, cymbal, trump, and drum Wild music of the Bull began; When through the chanting priestly clan Walk'd Ramses, and the high sun kiss'd This stone, with blessing scored and ban— This monument in London mist. The stone endures though gods be numb; Though human effort, plot, and plan Be sifted, drifted, like the sum Of sands in wastes Arabian. What king may deem him more than man, What priest says Faith can Time resist While this endures to mark their span— This monument in London mist? ENVOY. Prince, the stone's shade on your divan Falls; it is longer than ye wist: It preaches, as Time's gnomon can, This monument in London mist! 

RA

TUM

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF TRUE WISDOM. While others are asking for beauty or fame, Or praying to know that for which they should pray, Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame, Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey, The sage has found out a more excellent way— To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers, And his humble petition puts up day by day, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. Inventors may bow to the God that is lame, And crave from the fire on his stithy a ray; Philosophers kneel to the God without name, Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they; The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay, The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours; But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. Oh! grant me a life without pleasure or blame (As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame)! O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers! And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. ENVOY. Gods, grant or withhold it; your "yea" and your "nay" Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life is worth living, and here we would stay For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers. 

ENVOY

 BALLADE OF THE MUSE. Quem tu, Melpomene, semel. The man whom once, Melpomene, Thou look'st on with benignant sight, Shall never at the 

 Prev. P 9/64 next