Your praise of Nero leaves me cold: Poems of porphyry and of gold, Palatial poems, chill my heart. I gaze -- I wonder -- I depart. Not to Byzantium would I roam In quest of beauty, nor Babylon; Nor do I seek Sahara's sun To blind me to the hills of home. Here am I native; here the skies Burn not, the sea I know is gray; Wanly the winter sunset dies. Wanly comes day. Yet on these hills and near this sea Beauty has lifted eyes to me, Unlustful eyes, clear eyes and kind; While a clear voice chanted -- @3"They who find "Me not beside their doorsteps, know "Me never, know me never, though "Seeking, seeking me, high and low, "Forth on the far four winds they go!"@1 Therefore your basalt, jade, and gems, Your Saracenic silver, your Nilotic gods, your diadems To bind the brows of Queens, impure, Perfidious, passionate, perfumed -- these Your petted, pagan stage-properties, Seem but as toys of trifling worth. For I have marked the naked earth Beside my doorstep yield to the print Of a long light foot, and flash with a glint Of crocus-gold -- Crocus-gold! Crocus-gold no mill may mint Save the Mill of God -- The Mill of God! The Mill of God with His angels in't! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MY COMFORTER by EMILY JANE BRONTE SPRING'S WELCOME, FR. ALEXANDER AND CAMPASPE by JOHN LYLY OH! BLAME NOT THE BARD by THOMAS MOORE THE RUBAIYAT, 1879 EDITION: 101 by OMAR KHAYYAM BEDOUIN [LOVE] SONG by BAYARD TAYLOR ACROSS THE SEA by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM AEOLIAN HARP (2) by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM |