Life

LIFE, like a marble block, is given to all,

A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,

Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays

Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;

One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;

One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,

And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia's gaze,

Carves it apace in toys fantastical.

But least is he who, with enchanted eyes

Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,

Muses which god he shall immortalize

In the proud Parian's perpetuity,

Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies

That he night cometh wherein none shall see.

Edith Wharton

Chartres

I

IMMENSE, august, like some Titanic bloom,

The mighty choir unfolds its lithic core,

Petalled with panes of azure, gules and or,

Splendidly lambent in the Gothic gloom,

And stamened with keen flamelets that illume

The pale high-alter. On the prayer-worn floor,

By worshippers innumerous thronged of yore,

A few brown crones, familiars of the tomb,

The stranded driftwood of Faith's ebbing sea--

For these alone the finials fret the skies,

The topmost bosses shake their blossoms free,

While from the triple portals, with grave eyes,

Tranquil, and fixed upon eternity,

The cloud of witnesses still testifies.

II

The crimson panes like blood-drops stigmatise

The western floor. The aisles are mute and cold.

A rigid fetich in her robe of gold,

The Virgin of the Pillar, with blank eyes,

Enthroned beneath her votive canopies,

Gathers a meagre remnant to her fold.

The rest is solitude; the church, grown old,

Stands stark and grey beneath the burning skies.

Well-nigh again its mighty framework grows

To be a part of nature's self, withdrawn

>From hot humanity's impatient woes;

The floor is ridged like some rude mountain lawn,

And in the east one giant window shows

The roseate coldness of an Alp at dawn.

Edith Wharton

An Autumn Sunset

I

LEAGUERED in fire

The wild black promontories of the coast extend

Their savage silhouettes;

The sun in universal carnage sets,

And, halting higher,

The motionless storm-clouds mass their sullen threats,

Like an advancing mob in sword-points penned,

That, balked, yet stands at bay.

Mid-zenith hangs the fascinated day

In wind-lustrated hollows crystalline,

A wan Valkyrie whose wide pinions shine

Across the ensanguined ruins of the fray,

And in her hand swings high o'erhead,

Above the waste of war,

The silver torch-light of the evening star

Wherewith to search the faces of the dead.

II

Lagooned in gold,

Seem not those jetty promontories rather

The outposts of some ancient land forlorn,

Uncomforted of morn,

Where old oblivions gather,

The melancholy unconsoling fold

Of all things that go utterly to death

And mix no more, no more

With life's perpetually awakening breath?

Shall Time not ferry me to such a shore,

Over such sailless seas,

To walk with hope's slain importunities

In miserable marriage? Nay, shall not

All things be there forgot,

Save the sea's golden barrier and the black

Close-crouching promontories?

Dead to all shames, forgotten of all glories,

Shall I not wander there, a shadow's shade,

A spectre self-destroyed,

So purged of all remembrance and sucked back

Into the primal void,

That should we on that shore phantasmal meet

I should not know the coming of your feet?

Edith Wharton