Not for the anguish suffered is the slur, Not for the women's mocks, the taunts of men, No, but because you never welcomed her, Her of whose beauty I am only the pen. There was a dog, dog-minded, with dog's eyes, Damned by a dog's brute-nature to be true, Something within her made his spirit wise, He licked her hand, he knew her, not so you. When all adulterate beauty has gone by, When all inanimate matter has gone down, We will arise and walk, that dog and I, The only two who knew her in the town, We'll range the pleasant mountains side by side, Seeking the blood-stained flowers where Christs have died. Beauty was with me once, but now, grown old, I cannot hear nor see her: thus a king In the high turret kept him from the cold Over the fire, with his magic ring Which, as he wrought, made pictures come and go Of men and times, past, present, and to be, Now like a smoke, now flame-like, now a glow, Now dead, now bright, but always fantasy. While, on the stair without, a faithful slave Stabbed to the death, crawled bleeding, whispering "Sir, They come to kill you, fly: I come to save; O you great gods, have pity, let him hear." Then, with his last strength tapped and muttered, "Sire," While the king smiled and drowsed above the fire. So beauty comes, so with a failing hand She knocks and cries, and fails to make me hear, She who tells futures in the falling sand And still, by signs, makes hidden meanings clear; She, who behind this many peopled smoke, Moves in the light and struggles to direct, Through the deaf ear and by the baffled stroke, The wicked man, the honored architect. Yet at a dawn before the birds begin, In dreams, as the horse stamps and the hound stirs, Sleep slips the bolt and beauty enters in Crying aloud those hurried words of hers, And I awake and, in the birded dawn, Know her for Queen and own myself a pawn. If Beauty be at all, if, beyond sense, There be a wisdom piercing into brains, Why should the glory wait on impotence, Biding its time till blood is in the veins? There is no beauty, but, when thought is quick, Out of the noisy sickroom of ourselves, Some flattery comes to try to cheat the sick, Some drowsy drug is groped for on the shelves. And, for the rest, we play upon a scene Beautiful with the blood of living things; We move and speak and wonder and have been, Upon the dust as dust, not queens and kings; We know no beauty, nor does beauty care For us, this dust, that men make everywhere.