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His proud museums may with marble groan,
And Gallia gape on glories not her own;
But ever silent in the ungenial halls
Shall stand the statues on their pedestals.
By him alone the Muses are possessed

Who warms them from the marble-at his breast;
Bright, to the Greek from stone each goddess grew;
Vandals! each goddess is but stone to you!

DESCRIPTION OF THE VENUS OF MILO.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. EXTRACTS.

I SHALL come and live in the Louvre, I think. I feel as if I never want to go away. I had not been ten minutes in the place before I fell in love with the most beautiful creature the world has ever seen. She was

standing, silent and majestic, in the centre of one of the rooms of the statue gallery, and the very first glimpse of her struck one breathless with a sense of her beauty. I could not see the color of her eyes and hair exactly, but the latter is light, and the eyes, I should think, are gray. Her complexion is of a beautiful warm marble tinge. She is not a clever woman, evidently; I do not think she laughs or talks much-she seems too lazy to do more than smile. She is only beautiful.

This divine creature has lost her arms, which have been cut off at the shoulders, but she looks none the less lovely for the accident. She may be some two and thirty years old, and she was born two thousand years ago.

Her name is the Venus of Milo. O Victrix! O lucky Paris! How could he give the apple to any else but this enslaver, this joy of gods and men? at whose benign presence the flowers spring up, and the smiling ocean sparkles, and the soft skies beam with serene light!....

O thou generous Venus! O thou beautiful, bountiful calm! At thy soft feet let me kneel on cushions of Tyrian purple!

OZYMANDIÁS OF EGYPT.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing besides remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

TO A SKYLARK.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,

That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest,

Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the setting sun,

O'er which clouds are bright'ning,

Thou dost float and run,

Like an embodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight;

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad daylight

Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight.

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,

Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear,

Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

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All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not;

What is most like thee?

From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not;

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour

With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower;

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,

Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the

view;

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves,

By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd

thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was

Joyous and clear and fresh thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine!

I have never heard

Praise of love or wine

That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal,

Or triumphal chant,

Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt,—

A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain?

What fields, or waves, or mountains?

What shapes of sky or plain?

What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

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