Across his path the spouseless Lady cast Her shadow, and the man that thing became. His youth uprising called his age the Past. This was the strong grey head of laurelled name, And in his bosom an inverted Sage Mistook for light of morn the light which sank. But who while veins run blood shall know the page Succeeding ere we turn upon our blank? Comes Beauty with her tale of moon and cloud, Her silvered rims of mystery pointing in To hollows of the half-veiled unavowed, Where beats her secret life, grey heads will spin Quick as the young, and spell those hieroglyphs Of phosphorescent dusk, devoutly bent; They drink a cup to whirl on dizzier cliffs For their shamed fall, which asks, why was she sent! Why, and of whom, and whence; and tell they truth, The legends of her mission to beguile? Hard likeness to the toilful apes of youth He bore at times, and tempted the sly smile; And not on her soft lips was it descried. She stepped her way benevolently grave: Nor sign that Beauty fed her worm of pride, By tossing victim to the courtier knave, Let peep, nor of the naughty pride gave sign. Rather ’twas humbleness in being pursued, As pilgrim to the temple of a shrine. Had he not wits to pierce the mask he wooed? All wisdom’s armoury this man could wield; And if the cynic in the Sage it pleased Traverse her woman’s curtain and poor shield, For new example of a world diseased; Showing her shrineless, not a temple, bare; A curtain ripped to tatters by the blast; Yet she most surely to this man stood fair: He worshipped like the young enthusiast, Named simpleton or poet. Did he read Right through, and with the voice she held reserved Amid her vacant ruins jointly plead?