The Sovereigns

THEY who create rob death of half its stings;

They, from the dim inane and vague opaque

Of nothingness, build with their thought, and make

Enduring entities and beauteous things;

They are the Poets--they give airy wings

To shapes marmorean; or they overtake

The Ideal with the brush, or, soaring, wake

Far in the rolling clouds their glorious strings.

The Poet is the only potentate;

His sceptre reaches o'er remotest zones;

His thought remembered and his golden tones

Shall, in the ears of nations uncreate,

Roll on for ages and reverberate

When Kings are dust beside forgotten thrones.

Lloyd Mifflin

The Flight

UPON a cloud among the stars we stood.

The angel raised his hand and looked and said,

"Which world, of all yon starry myriad,

Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude

Became a harp whereon his voice and mood

Made spheral music round his haloed head.

I spake--for then I had not long been dead--

"Let me look round upon these vasts, and brood

A moment on these orbs ere I decide . . .

What is yon lower star that beauteous shines

And with soft splendor now incarnadines

Our wings--There would I go and there abide."

He smiled as one who some child's thought divines:

"That is the world where yesternight you died."

Lloyd Mifflin

Milton

HIS feet were shod with music and had wings

Like Hermes: far upon the peaks of song

His sandals sounded silverly along;

The dull world blossomed into beauteous things

Where'er he trod; and Heliconian springs

Gushed from the rocks he touched; round him a throng

Of fair invisibles, seraphic, strong,

Struck Orphean murmurs out of golden strings;

But he, spreading keen pinions for a white

Immensity of radiance and of peace,

Up-looming to the Empyrean infinite,

Far through ethereal fields, and zenith seas,

High, with strong wing-beats and with eagle ease,

Soared in a solitude of glorious light!

Lloyd Mifflin

To An Old Venetian Wine-Glass

DAUGHTER of Venice, fairer than the moon!

From thy dark casement leaning, half divine,

And to the lutes of love that low repine

Across the midnight of the hushed lagoon

Listening with languor in a dreamful swoon--

On such a night as this thou didst entwine

Thy lily fingers round this glass of wine,

And clasped thy climbing lover--none too soon!

Thy lover left, but ere he left thy room

From this he drank, his warm lips at the brim;

Thou kissed it as he vanished in the gloom;

That kiss, because of thy true love for him--

Long, long ago, when thou wast in thy bloom,--

Hath left it ever rosy round the rim!

Lloyd Mifflin

To The Milkweed

NONE call thee flower! . . . I will not so malign

The satin softness of thy plumed seed,

Nor so profane thee as to call thee weed,

Thou tuft of ermine down, fit to entwine

About a queen; or, fitter still, to line

The nest of birds of strange exotic breed.

The orient cunning, and the somnolent speed

Of looms of dusky Ind weave not so fine

A gossamer . . . Ah me! could he who sings,

On such adventurous and aerial wings

Far over lands and undiscovered seas

Waft the dark seeds of his imaginings,

That, flowering, men might say, Lo! look on these

Wild Weeds of Song--not all ungracious things!

Lloyd Mifflin