The Power Of Art

 by George Santayana

 Decima 

Silent daisies out of reach, 

Maidens of the starry grass, 

Gazing on me as I pass 

With a look too wise for speech, 

Teach me resignation,--teach 

Patience to the barren clod, 

As, above your happier sod, 

Bending to the wind's caress, 

You--unplucked, alas!--no less 

Sweetly manifest the god. 

The Power Of Art 

Not human art, but living gods alone 

Can fashion beauties that by changing live,-- 

Her buds to spring, his fruits to autumn give, 

To earth her fountains in her heart of stone; 

But these in their begetting are o'erthrown, 

Nor may the sentenced minutes find reprieve; 

And summer in the blush of joy must grieve 

To shed his flaunting crown of petals blown. 

We to our works may not impart our breath, 

Nor them with shifting light of life array; 

We show but what one happy moment saith; 

Yet may our hands immortalize the day 

When life was sweet, and save from utter death 

The sacred past that should not pass away. 

Mont Brevent 

O dweller in the valley, lift thine eyes 

To where, above the drift of cloud, the stone 

Endures in silence, and to God alone 

Upturns its furrowed visage, and is wise. 

There yet is being, far from all that dies, 

And beauty where no mortal maketh moan, 

Where larger planets swim the liquid zone, 

And wider spaces stretch to calmer skies. 

Only a little way above the plain 

Is snow eternal. Round the mountain's knees 

Hovers the fury of the wind and rain. 

Look up, and teach thy noble heart to cease 

From endless labour. There is perfect peace 

Only a little way above thy pain.