I SEEN ALOFT FROM AFAR Estranged in site, Aerial gleaming, warmly white, You look a suncloud motionless In noon of day divine; Your beauty charmed enhancement takes In Art's long after-shine. II NEARER VIEWED Like Lais, fairest of her kind, In subtlety your form's defined -- The cornice curved, each shaft inclined, While yet, to eyes that do but revel And take the sweeping view, Erect this seems, and that a level, To line and plummet true. Spinoza gazes; and in mind Dreams that one architect designed Lais -- and you! III THE FRIEZE What happy musings genial went With airiest touch the chisel lent To frisk and curvet light Of horses gay -- their riders grave -- Contrasting so in action brave With virgins meekly bright, Clear filing on in even tone With pitcher each, one after one Like water-fowl in flight. IV THE LAST TILE When the last marble tile was laid The winds died down on all the seas; Hushed were the birds, and swooned the glade; Ictinus sat; Aspasia said "Hist! -- Art's meridian, Pericles!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HOUSES OF DREAMS by SARA TEASDALE LINES ON OBSERVING A BLOSSOM [ON THE FIRST OF FEBRUARY 1796] by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE VERSES TO HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS OF YORK by JOHN DRYDEN HYMNS OF THE MARSHES: THE MARSHES OF GLYNN by SIDNEY LANIER WILLIE WINKIE by WILLIAM MILLER IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 83 by ALFRED TENNYSON |