CXXII.
Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,
And fevers into false creation:—where,
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?
In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men,
The unreached Paradise of our despair,
Which o'er-informs[1] the pencil and the pen,
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?
CXXIII.
Who loves, raves[2]—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cure
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds
Which robed our idols, and we see too sure
Nor Worth nor Beauty dwells from out the mind's
Ideal shape of such; yet still it binds
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on,
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,
Seems ever near the prize—wealthiest when most undone.
- ↑ [Compare Dryden on Shaftesbury (Absalom and Achitophel, pt. i. lines 156-158)—
"A fiery soul which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay,
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay."] - ↑ [The Romans had more than one proverb to this effect; e.g. "Amantes Amentes sunt" (Adagia Veterum, 1643, p. 52"); "Amare et sapere vix Deo conceditur" (Syri Sententiæ, 1818, p. 5).]
