The Parthenon

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! "