The cord broke and the tent Slipped and the silken roof Lay prone beneath the viewless hoof Of the deliberate firmament. We still in this terrene abode Forlorn must tread the difficult road, And all meek thanks and all belief Hardly suffice to rampart grief. For gone is Beauty's votary apostolic And are her temples now delivered over To blindworms and libidinous goats that frolic In places hallowed by that celestial lover. Save only two or three With undivided minds like thee, None now remains that girds The peregrinal loin, None reverent of Beauty's holy tongue, But counterfeiters of her imaged coin, Iconoclasts, breakers of carven words, Seekers of worthless treasure in the dung, Mock mages and cacophonous charlatans, And pismire artisans Labouring to make Such mirrored replicas of Nature's face As might the surface of a stagnant lake. Yet we should anger not, Nor let that be forgot, The testament of stateliest worth He left us when he fled the earth. The mausoleum made of rhyme, Fair in its unfrequented field, Which shall invulnerably shield His memory to the end of Time; The house with curtain-flaming halls And roof of gold and jewelled walls For which the fisher sank his net Into the deepest pools of speech, Scooping rich conchs and ribbons wet That a less venturous could not reach, The hunter tracked the metaphor On many a foamy silver coast A hundred leagues beyond the most Fabulous Tellurian shore. Magnificent he was and mild, Glad to be still and glad to speak, Daring yet delicate as a child, Faithful, compassionate and holy, And, being human, strong and weak, And full of hope and melancholy. No more than we, able to shed Man's nature he inherited, Neither sin's garrison to kill, Yet at the last with constancy so great As the world's vanities to abnegate, Sternly to will the sacrifice of will Upon the altars of the Uncreate, So that he lived before he died As one who hourly to himself denied All joys save those that cannot pall, Who having nothing yet had all. FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND I When I was a boy there was a friend of mine, We thought ourselves warriors and grown folk swine, Stupid old animals who never understood And never had an impulse and said "you must be good." We slank like stoats and fled like foxes, We put cigarettes in the pillar-boxes, Lighted cigarettes and letters all aflame-- O the surprise when the postman came!