| |
| BENEATH the warrior’s helm, behold | |
| The flowing tresses of the woman! | |
| Minerva, Pallas, what you will— | |
| A winsome creature, Greek or Roman. | |
| |
| Minerva? No! ’t is some sly minx | 5 |
| In cousin’s helmet masquerading; | |
| If not—then Wisdom was a dame | |
| For sonnets and for serenading! | |
| |
| I thought the goddess cold, austere, | |
| Not made for love’s despairs and blisses: | 10 |
| Did Pallas wear her hair like that? | |
| Was Wisdom’s mouth so shaped for kisses? | |
| |
| The Nightingale should be her bird, | |
| And not the Owl, big-eyed and solemn: | |
| How very fresh she looks, and yet | 15 |
| She’s older far than Trajan’s Column! | |
| |
| The magic hand that carved this face, | |
| And set this vine-work round it running, | |
| Perhaps ere mighty Phidias wrought | |
| Had lost its subtle skill and cunning. | 20 |
| |
| Who was he? Was he glad or sad, | |
| Who knew to carve in such a fashion? | |
| Perchance he graved the dainty head | |
| For some brown girl that scorned his passion. | |
| |
| Perchance, in some still garden-place, | 25 |
| Where neither fount nor tree to-day is, | |
| He flung the jewel at the feet | |
| Of Phryne, or perhaps ’t was Laïs. | |
| |
| But he is dust; we may not know | |
| His happy or unhappy story: | 30 |
| Nameless, and dead these centuries, | |
| His work outlives him—there’s his glory! | |
| |
| Both man and jewel lay in earth | |
| Beneath a lava-buried city; | |
| The countless summers came and went | 35 |
| With neither haste, nor hate, nor pity. | |
| |
| Years blotted out the man, but left | |
| The jewel fresh as any blossom, | |
| Till some Visconti dug it up— | |
| To rise and fall on Mabel’s bosom! | 40 |
| |
| O nameless brother! see how Time | |
| Your gracious handiwork has guarded: | |
| See how your loving, patient art | |
| Has come, at last, to be rewarded. | |
| |
| Who would not suffer slights of men, | 45 |
| And pangs of hopeless passion also, | |
| To have his carven agate-stone | |
| On such a bosom rise and fall so! | |
| |
