Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 2.djvu/462

420 CXXII.

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,

And fevers into false creation:—where,

Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?

In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?

Where are the charms and virtues which we dare

Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,

The unreached Paradise of our despair,

Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen,

And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?

CXXIII.

Who loves, raves —'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure

Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure

Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's

Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds

The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,

Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;

The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,

Seems ever near the prize—wealthiest when most undone.