Page:The Poems of Oscar Wilde.pdf/66

 To make one life more beautiful, one day

More godlike in its period? but now the Age of Clay

Returns in horrid cycle, and the earth

Hath borne again a noisy progeny

Of ignorant Titans, whose ungodly birth

Hurls them against the august hierarchy

Which sat upon Olympus, to the Dust

They have appealed, and to that barren arbiter they must

Repair for judgment, let them, if they can,

From Natural Warfare and insensate Chance,

Create the new Ideal rule for man!

Methinks that was not my inheritance;

For I was nurtured otherwise, my soul

Passes from higher heights of life to a more supreme goal.

Lo! while we spake the earth did turn away

Her visage from the God, and Hecate's boat

Rose silver-laden, till the jealous day

Blew all its torches out: I did not note

The waning hours, to young Endymions

Time's palsied fingers count in vain his rosary of suns! 52