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101
A PALIMPSEST.
I am an eternal verse,
Framed in language strong and terse;
Ye repeat and re-repeat me,
In your dull pedantic schools,
Till I lose all sense and beauty,
In the mouths of learnéd fools;
And they know not whence they got me,
Nor the reason of my fame;
And they ask not how, unaltered,
Through the centuries I came;
My perfection is undying,
As the love of Man for Art;
If by chance a Poet meets me,
Straight I reach unto his heart.
Framed in language strong and terse;
Ye repeat and re-repeat me,
In your dull pedantic schools,
Till I lose all sense and beauty,
In the mouths of learnéd fools;
And they know not whence they got me,
Nor the reason of my fame;
And they ask not how, unaltered,
Through the centuries I came;
My perfection is undying,
As the love of Man for Art;
If by chance a Poet meets me,
Straight I reach unto his heart.
For a thousand years I lay
In a monastery grey,
Hidden under other ink,
By the men who loved to pray,
And who knew not how to think.
But a day arrived at last,
When my beauty of the past,
Young as ever and as bright,
Saw again the heavens' light;
For a cunning hand effaced
Every word above me traced
On the parchment old and shrunk,
By the Monk.
In a monastery grey,
Hidden under other ink,
By the men who loved to pray,
And who knew not how to think.
But a day arrived at last,
When my beauty of the past,
102
Saw again the heavens' light;
For a cunning hand effaced
Every word above me traced
On the parchment old and shrunk,
By the Monk.
Faint the writing I was clothed in,
As I thus appeared again;
But it yet was all-sufficient
Immortality to gain.
Beauty, hid 'neath dusty layers,
Oft no sign for ages gives;
But it lives;
And the moment you release it,
Will once more enchant and conquer;
For, like Truth,
Beauty lives in endless youth.
As I thus appeared again;
But it yet was all-sufficient
Immortality to gain.
Beauty, hid 'neath dusty layers,
Oft no sign for ages gives;
But it lives;
And the moment you release it,
Will once more enchant and conquer;
For, like Truth,
Beauty lives in endless youth.
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