Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.
By Frank DempsterSherman1369 On a Greek Vase
D
Unto me seemeth thus to speak:
“Behold in me the workmanship,
The grace and cunning of a Greek!
Whose sense of symmetry was such,
The labor of a single day
Immortal grew beneath his touch.
Around this slender neck of mine,
The form of her he loved was blent
With every matchless curve and line.
Who gave unto herself his heart,
That love and beauty from the grave
Might rise and live again in art.”
Of love and skill, of art and grace,
Thou seem’st to me no more the frail
Memento of an older race:
And figured o’er with fret and scroll,
I dream, by happy chance was caught,
And dwelleth now, that maiden’s soul.