Page:The ascent of man by Blind, Mathilde.djvu/63


 * The fabulous bowers of the Hesperides

Ne'er bore such blooming gold as glows in thine:
 * Thou green Oasis on the tides of Time
 * Where no rude blast disturbs the azure clime;

Thou Paradise whence man can ne'er be driven,
 * Where, severed from the world-clang and the roar,
 * Still in the flesh he yet may reach that shore

Where want is not, and, like the dew from heaven,
 * There drops upon the fevered soul
 * The balm of Thought's divine control
 * And rapt absorption in the whole:
 * Delivery in the realm of art
 * Of the world-racked human heart—
 * Forms and hues and sounds that make
 * Life grow lovelier for their sake.

By sheer persistence, strenuous and slow,
 * The marble yields and, line by flowing line
 * And curve by curve, begins to swell and shine

Beneath the ring of each far-sighted blow: