"
O Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent!
O Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent!
Elizabeth Browning
"--
"These carpets--you walk slow on them like kings,
Inaudible like spirits, while your foot
Dips deep in velvet roses and such things. "--
"Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13]
The music, winding through the stops, upsprings
To make the player very rich: compute! "
"Here's goblet-glass, to take in with your wine
The very sun its grapes were ripened under:
Drink light and juice together, and each fine. "--
"This model of a steamship moves your wonder?
You should behold it crushing down the brine
Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder. "--
"Here's sculpture! Ah, _we_ live too! why not throw
Our life into our marbles? Art has place
For other artists after Angelo. "--
"I tried to paint out here a natural face;
For nature includes Raffael, as we know,
Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case? "--
"Methinks you will not match this steel of ours! "--
"Nor you this porcelain! One might dream the clay
Retained in it the larvae of the flowers,
They bud so, round the cup, the old Spring-way. "--
"Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers
With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play.
"
O Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent! --
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well: is your courage spent
In handwork only? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls may perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for? no light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ,--no cure!
No help for women sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou four
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No entrance for the exiled? no repose,
Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?
No mercy for the slave, America?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?
Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, O world, no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?
"These carpets--you walk slow on them like kings,
Inaudible like spirits, while your foot
Dips deep in velvet roses and such things. "--
"Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13]
The music, winding through the stops, upsprings
To make the player very rich: compute! "
"Here's goblet-glass, to take in with your wine
The very sun its grapes were ripened under:
Drink light and juice together, and each fine. "--
"This model of a steamship moves your wonder?
You should behold it crushing down the brine
Like a blind Jove who feels his way with thunder. "--
"Here's sculpture! Ah, _we_ live too! why not throw
Our life into our marbles? Art has place
For other artists after Angelo. "--
"I tried to paint out here a natural face;
For nature includes Raffael, as we know,
Not Raffael nature. Will it help my case? "--
"Methinks you will not match this steel of ours! "--
"Nor you this porcelain! One might dream the clay
Retained in it the larvae of the flowers,
They bud so, round the cup, the old Spring-way. "--
"Nor you these carven woods, where birds in bowers
With twisting snakes and climbing cupids, play.
"
O Magi of the east and of the west,
Your incense, gold and myrrh are excellent! --
What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest?
Your hands have worked well: is your courage spent
In handwork only? Have you nothing best,
Which generous souls may perfect and present,
And He shall thank the givers for? no light
Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor
Who sit in darkness when it is not night?
No cure for wicked children? Christ,--no cure!
No help for women sobbing out of sight
Because men made the laws? no brothel-lure
Burnt out by popular lightnings? Hast thou four
No remedy, my England, for such woes?
No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound,
No entrance for the exiled? no repose,
Russia, for knouted Poles worked underground,
And gentle ladies bleached among the snows?
No mercy for the slave, America?
No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France?
Alas, great nations have great shames, I say.
No pity, O world, no tender utterance
Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way
For poor Italia, baffled by mischance?
