And here the old burden of our song must once again be heard:  If we would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves first learn how to love with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic passion.  We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious superficialities are embodied in the errors of modern Art,—­we must sacrifice these at the shrine of the true Aphrodite; else the modern Procrustes will continue to stretch and torture Greek Lines on geometrical beds, and the aesthetic Pharisees around us will still crucify the Greek Ideal.

[To be continued.]

THE ROSE ENTHRONED.

  It melts and seethes, the chaos that shall grow
    To adamant beneath the house of life: 
  In hissing hatred atoms clash, and go
      To meet intenser strife.

  And ere that fever leaves the granite veins,
    Down thunders o’er the waste a torrid sea: 
  Now Flood, now Fire, alternate despot reigns,—­
      Immortal foes to be.

  Built by the warring elements, they rise,
    The massive earth-foundations, tier on tier,
  Where slimy monsters with unhuman eyes
      Their hideous heads uprear.

  The building of the world is not for you
    That glare upon each other, and devour: 
  Race floating after race fades out of view,
      Till beauty springs from power

  Meanwhile from crumbling rocks and shoals of death
    Shoots up rank verdure to the hidden sun;
  The gulfs are eddying to the vague, sweet breath
      Of richer life begun,—­

  Richer and sweeter far than aught before,
    Though rooted in the grave of what has been. 
  Unnumbered burials yet must heap Earth’s floor,
      Ere she her heir shall win;

  And ever nobler lives and deaths more grand
    For nourishment of that which is to come: 
  While ’mid the ruins of the work she planned
      Sits Nature, blind and dumb.

  For whom or what she plans, she knows no more
    Than any mother of her unborn child;
  Yet beautiful forewarnings murmur o’er
      Her desolations wild.

  Slowly the clamor and the clash subside: 
    Earth’s restlessness her patient hopes subdue: 
  Mild oceans shoreward heave a pulse-like tide: 
      The skies are veined with blue.

And life works through the growing quietness
To bring some darling mystery into form: 
Beauty her fairest Possible would dress
In colors pure and warm.

Within the depths of palpitating seas
A tender tint;—­anon a line of grace
Some lovely thought from its dull atom frees,
The coming joy to trace;—­

A pencilled moss on tablets of the sand,
Such as shall veil the unbudded maiden-blush
Of beauty yet to gladden the green land;—­
A breathing, through the hush,

Of some sealed perfume longing to burst out
And give its prisoned rapture to the air;—­
A brooding hope, a promise through a doubt
Is whispered everywhere.