Worship ~

All beauty seems regathered and reborn

Thou art that rose whose garden is the morn,
The pearl whose beauty haunts the dreamland sea,
And that romance whose immortality
Endures our dreary planet but in scorn;
For thee the lyres of Eden wait forlorn
Ere yet thy coming set their music free.

In what sincerity can I defend
Mine art's insistence of thy loveliness,
Tho' such be but the mortal shadow thrown
By soul on flesh! Before its light I bend
As one who holds his kindred none the less,
Yet who has worship for one face alone.

~ George Sterling, (1869-1926)