Perfect, marmoreal, curved and carven statue-wise,
Your hard immaculate beauty dulls the sharpness of desire,
And chills it to a changeless passion–
A frozen passion bright and pallid,
And clear as is the ghostly fervor of the moon’s white fire.
And all the dreams of you are lunar dreams–
Such bright and hueless visions as are born
Of moonset on autumnal meres forlorn,
Where the white lotus lingers,
Unstirred with full and fragile petals overblown
That the least wave would loosen
And shatter like the touch of fingers;
While the high clouds upon the western hills,
Immobile, rest like towering palaces
And mausoleums wrought of dim fantastic stone.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1927.
The author died in 1961, so this work is also in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 60 years or less. This work may also be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.