Flaxman
We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone,
Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought,
And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought
Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone,—
A higher charm than modern culture won
With all the wealth of metaphysic lore,
Gifted to analyze, dissect, explore.
A many-colored light flows from one sun;
Art, ’neath its beams, a motley thread has spun;
The prism modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure, white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest self I find.
Copyright Credit: Margaret Fuller Ossoli, "Flaxman" from Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems, ed. Arthur B. Fuller (Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860): 371. Public domain.
Source: 1993