th the feet of the snow-white kine,
That must bleed at the shrine of the goddess;
Care is forgotten, for life
Hath no aim and no mission but pleasure;
Its cup is a foretaste of Paradise,
Drain the sweet draught to the dregs,
The fountain will flow on for ever!
'Tis the feast day of Venus--Hail! Hail!

Pygmalion stood beside his master-piece,
Still with his mind devote to mighty thoughts
And busy inspiration, for through Time
The worker must be constant to his toil,
Heedless of pleasure and the idle toys
For which man bartereth eternity;
Life is his seed-time, after life his rest.
Had he not joyed to scan that lovely form,
And mark each glorious lineament, that held
A model up to Nature of pure grace
Unblemished by the shadow of a fault?
Had he not loved with more than Artist soul
The beauteous creature of his heaven-drawn power,
And oped again the flood-gates of his heart
To the full current of humanity?
Had he not thanked the gods for victory,
And gloried in his strength with conscious might
That made e'en fame his fellow? Yet he stood
Silent and sad beside his finished work.
What lacked he yet? Life! life! for his creation:
"What have I wrought," he uttered, "what achieved?
Naught! naught! my power hath wasted on a stone,
Changed its rude seeming haply unto grace,
But as it was, so is it now, mere stone;
My beauteous image, emblem of my soul,
Cast in the mould of thought's supremest good,
Fairer than all of womankind on Earth,
Is yet more worthless and more transient
Than is the meanest wretch who feels the life
Throb quenchlessly within him. Time may strew
Its fragments blindly o'er the face of Earth,
Scatter its spotless beauties, yet pass on
And leave the world no poorer than it was.
There is no beauty separate from soul;
From it as from a spring flow all the streams
That clothe this dust with living loveliness
Else doomed to deep aridity and death.
O lovely daughter of my craving soul!
Hope of my life! Divinest shape of Earth!
Can I regard thy beauty thus and know
Thou art the empty semblance of a worthless thing.
Are those sweet charms where loveliness hath set
The limits of her potency, mere dust
Unnobled by the passage of a soul,
Rescued a moment from the senseless mass,
That soon again shall have thee for its own?
What hath my soul begotten? Death in life--
A child of E