Silverpoints — A Halting Sonnet

TO MISS ELLEN TERRY ON HER BIRTHDAY

It is not meet for one like me to praise A lady, princess, goddess, artist such;

For great ones crane their foreheads to her touch, To change their splendours into crowns of bays.

But poets never rhyme as they are bid;

Nor never see their ft goal; but aspire, With straining eyes, to some far silvern spire;

Flowers among, sing to the gods cloud-hid.

One of these, onetime, opened velvet eyes Upon the world--the years recall the day;

Those lights still shine, conscious of power alway, But flattering men with feigned looks of surprise.

The couplet is so great that, where thou art, --Thou being a poem--it is past my art.

WINGS IN THE DARK