“. Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitaryfigure with a Rosa veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a dream within adream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought,that it was Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman from the beginning of theworld has ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit,and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love noblyhe knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehementjealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows.”

“When You Are Old"WHEN you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.”

“The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked in the triumph of this imagination at the birds of Hera, glowing in the firelight as though they were wrought of jewels; and to my mind, for which symbolism was a necessity, they seemed the doorkeepers of my world, shutting out all that was not of as affluent a beauty as their own; and for a moment I thought as I had thought in so many other moments, that it was possible to rob life of every bitterness except the bitterness of death; and then a thought which had followed this thought, time after time, filled me with a passionate sorrow.”

“Before The World Was MadeIf I make the lashes darkand the eyes more brightand the lips more scarlet,or ask if all be rightfrom mirror after mirror,no vanity's displayed:I'm looking for the face I hadbefore the world was made.What if I look upon a manas though on my beloved,and my blood be cold the whileand my heart unmoved?Why should he think me cruelor that he is betrayed?I'd have him love the thing that wasbefore the world was made.”

“I had fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard him speaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with only one god,' he was saying, 'and the more a man lives in imagination and in a refined understanding, the more gods does he meet with and talk with, and the more does he come under the power of Roland, who sounded in the Valley of Roncesvalles the last trumpet of the body's will and pleasure; and of Hamlet, who saw them perishing away, and sighed; and of Faust, who looked for them up and down the world and could not find them; and under the power of all those countless divinities who have taken upon themselves spiritual bodies in the minds of the modern poets and romance writers, and under the power of the old divinities, who since the Renaissance have won everything of their ancient worship except the sacrifice of birds and fishes, the fragrance of garlands and the smoke of incense. The many think humanity made these divinities, and that it can unmake them again; but we who have seen them pass in rattling harness, and in soft robes, and heard them speak with articulate voices while we lay in deathlike trance, know that they are always making and unmaking humanity, which is indeed but the trembling of their lips.”

“There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,And he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,Went walking with slow steps along the gleamingAnd humming Sands, where windy surges wend:And he called loudly to the stars to bendFrom their pale thrones and comfort him, but theyAmong themselves laugh on and sing alway:And then the man whom Sorrow named his friendCried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story.!The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still,Rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.He fled the persecution of her gloryAnd, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,Cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.But naught they heard, for they are always listening,The dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.And then the man whom Sorrow named his friendSought once again the shore, and found a shell,And thought, I will my heavy story tellTill my own words, re-echoing, shall sendTheir sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;And my own talc again for me shall sing,And my own whispering words be comforting,And lo! my ancient burden may depart.Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;But the sad dweller by the sea-ways loneChanged all he sang to inarticulate moanAmong her wildering whirls, forgetting him.”

“I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above; those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.”