Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.djvu/1013

 The most high Muses that fulfil all ages Weep, and our God's heart yearns.

For, sparing of his sacred strength, not often Among us darkling here the lord of light Makes manifest his music and his might In hearts that open and in lips that soften With the soft flame and heat of songs that shine. Thy lips indeed he touch'd with bitter wine, And nourish'd them indeed with bitter bread; Yet surely from his hand thy soul's food came, The fire that scarr'd thy spirit at his flame Was lighted, and thine hungering heart he fed Who feeds our hearts with fame.

Therefore he too now at thy soul's sunsetting, God of all suns and songs, he too bends down To mix his laurel with thy cypress crown, And save thy dust from blame and from forgetting. Therefore he too, seeing all thou wert and art, Compassionate, with sad and sacred heart, Mourns thee of many his children the last dead, And hallows with strange tears and alien sighs Thine unmelodious mouth and sunless eyes, And over thine irrevocable head Sheds light from the under skies.

And one weeps with him in the ways Lethean, And stains with tears her changing bosom chill; That obscure Venus of the hollow hill, That thing transformed which was the Cytherean, With lips that lost their Grecian laugh divine Long since, and face no more call'd Erycine—