Brother, yet great thy power; Thou stood'st as on a tower Small 'neath the stars yet high above the fields; In thy alembic song Imagination strong Distilled what essences the quest to mortals yields. This thy reward well-won, For every morning's sun Found thy heart's firm allegiance still unshaken; No temporal ache or smart Drave Beauty from thy heart, And by thy mighty mistress never wast forsaken. Yes; for though stringent was the test, When that thy trial was bitterest, Steadfast thou did'st remain; unshod The harrows of Pain thy feet once trod, Humiliate as thy sad song tells Before the vault's white sentinels. Friendless and faint thou sojourned'st there, A bowed, brave, timid wanderer, A lonely nomad of the spirit, Who did a triple curse inherit, Hunger, regret and memory. Yet never did they vanquish thee; When nighest broken, most alone, Thy unassuagèd thoughts could clamber To beauty on her ageless throne; Thou wert as one in torture chamber Who sees the blue through an open casement And hammers his soul to endure the time Of his corporeal abasement; Nor writhed'st at thine or others' fault, But with grim tenderness did salt Thy cicatrices with a rhyme. Not the most sable flame of gloom Could penetrate thy inmost room; But through the walls thy spirit sucked Into that cloistral hermitage Stray lovely things, moonbeams and snows The far sky shed into thy cage, And, from the very gutter plucked, A lost and mired campestral rose.