Explore "Silverpoints" by John Gray on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is not meet for one like me to praise / A lady, princess, goddess, artist such; / For great ones crane their foreheads to her touch, / To change their splendours into crowns of bays. / But poets never rhyme as they are bid; / Nor never see their ft goal; but aspire, / With straining eyes, to some far silvern spire; / Flowers among, sing to the gods cloud-hid. / One of these, onetime, opened velvet eyes / Upon the world -- the years recall the day; / Those lights still shine, conscious of power alway, / But flattering men with feigned looks of surprise.
The couplet is so great that, where thou art, / -- Thou being a poem -- it is past my art.