Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900. 1900.

By Ednah Proctor (Clarke)Hayes

1679 The Deathless

WHAT charlatans in this later day

Beat at the gates of Art!

Each with his trick of speech or brush,—

Forgetting, that apart

From all the brawling of an age,

Its feverish fantasy,

She waits, who only unto Time

The soul of Art sets free!

God’s handmaid Beauty,—whose touch rounds

A dewdrop or a world,—

God-sprung when first through Chaos’ night

The morning wings unfurled;

Beauty,—who still the secret gives

Whispered the ages through,—

Recurrent as the flush of dawn,

Essential as the dew.

O babblers of some surer guide!—

Knowledge goes changing by;

Caprice may bloom its little hour,

And creeds are born and die;

Still Melos on her worshippers

Looks with calm-lidded eyes;

Still Helen, though Troy sleeps in dust,

Smiles through the centuries;

Still she who gleaned on Judah’s plain

Love in her sheaves doth bind;

Still, down the glades of Arden, dance

The feet of Rosalind.