If here is aught, its dues shall be allow’d;

I rest content, but of my office proud.

{2}

{2}

II.

Aye fashioned from the mirror of the soul

That lends its shadow to this fleeting world,

How doth thy beauty in itself control

The spirit and the form wherein ’tis whirled;

In others earth beneath the inward fire

Sinks down, abashed, nor knows to bear the fame,

While some more mean exalt the entrancing mire,

Smothering the sparkles of celestial flame;

Yet either wanting, for, with those of earth,

Earth’s purer mixture hallows what it lends,

And easier leads the sons of self-same birth

To fathom beauty in its heavenlier ends:

’Tis fit Nature should find a lovely hearse,

When man by death springs from the Universe.

{3}

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