Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/216

188 O Spirit of Beauty, unconsuming fire!

Therefore by ancient Nile

Rose the vast columned aisle,

And on the Athenian Hill the wonder white

Whose shattered glory is the world's supreme delight.

X

So is it that to thy imperial shore,

Bright Italy! the generations fly,

Even but once to breathe, or e'er they die,

Where did a godlike race its soul outpour;

Its birth divine revealing

On glorious wall and ceiling,

While dome and rhythmic statue, Beauty-wrought,

Declare all human art is but what Heaven hath taught.

XI

Fair Italy! whose dread and peerless hight

The song is of the awful Ghibelline!

Poet! who 'mid the threefold dream divine

Didst follow Art and Love to the Central Light!

Tell us, O Dante! tell

What thou dost know so well,

That horror and death are but the shade and foil

Of Beauty, deathless, godlike, with never scathe or soil.

XII

Spirit divine! man falls upon the sod

In awe of thee, in worship and amaze:—

Thou older than the mountains, or the blaze

Of sunsets, or the sun; thou old as God;

As God who did create

Long ere man reached his state

All shapes of natural Beauty that men see,

And His wide universe did dedicate to thee.