Gracious Muse! lift thine eye from all too dark a night,
Else make beauteous my days through deep a slumber,
Uneclipsed of looks so fair, my mind, no eyes can see,
The inner depth of reality, hid away from out of sight;
...
When oft eclipsed of looks so fair, my mind
brings forth nothing but to my sightless view
this world, of virgin-mother born, more beautiful
than e'ery fig leaf upon the golden bough;
...
Of such frivolities to speak I have no wits,
Nor my body aligns to a mast-shaft at north;
every fawning bay at my door to drown an eye, unused to flow,
through looks more bright than by what I write,
...
Must I of my darkened days to some rivulet blue,
Drown an eye that of erased looks to my mind still,
A foul fawning bay at my door, bewails the night;
Not least to account for love in the mellowing year of spring,
...
This love that grows each day anew,
Not still beyond thought of zephyr wings;
That her muse in argument with thee,
Hath brought us to the same old page,
...
Oh, that man! the western avant-garde,
In whose footsteps the rest of us follow;
That you may be the next, beware, my lord!
No first man is ever born to do this,
...
When through that age-old window-pane,
The morning sun arise from out of the blues;
And last night's twilight dream is brought to light,
Which, too, by day's labour shall wear out soon,
...
With all the grandeur
of the interior of a garden
you stand straight,
ready to spread out
...
Oft I feel, and feel to fill my heart with love
Of beauty's belligerent smile that corrupts the mind,
Of bewitching looks such lichens of desire in ill-omen
To a fell hand by what I write through e'ery pouring shadow;
...
Me too hath passed that age of crimson joy,
that in summer's prime to my e'er living memory;
oft looks on tempests to that day of unaltered eye,
of what I write to my eyes so blind in Hades of a star,
...