Page:The Statues in the Block and Other Poems (1881).djvu/16

Held deep within a restless eager light,
As gleams a diamond in a darkened room
With radiance hoarded from the vanished sun.

"The meteor-stone is dense and dark in space,
But bursts in flame when through the air it rushes;
And our dull life is like an aerolite
That leaps to fire within the sphere of love."
Unchecked his mood ran on: "Sweet amorous hours
That lie in years as isles in tropic seas,
You spring to view as Art is born of Love,
And shape rich beauties in this marble block!

Before them rose within the shaded light
A tall and shapely mass of Alp-white crystal
Fresh from the heart of a Carrara quarry.

"Opaque to you this marble; but to me,
Whose eyes the chrism of passion has anointed,
The stone is pregnant with a life of love.
Within this monolith there lives a form