Littell's Living Age/Volume 140/Issue 1811/A Borrower

by W. P. A.

For works with similar titles, see Borrower.

A BORROWER.

AN ANSWER TO MR. BOURDILLON.

While Time, the cunning, mars
Surely all loveliness.

The sculptor's chisel mars
The marble's spotless snow;
But by those cruel scars
New loveliness doth grow.

A form of ideal grace
Slept in the smooth white stone;
The steel's relentless-trace,
That nobler charm has won.

Time's chisels, hard and stern,
May youthful beauty slay;
But beauty they return
More perfect every way.

We cared not for the stone,
Nor for its faultless white;
But on the statue grown,
We gaze in fixed delight.

W. P. A..