ON A GREEK VASE

by: Frank Dempster Sherman (1860-1916)

IVINELY shapen cup, thy lip

Unto me seemeth thus to speak:

"Behold in me the workmanship,

The grace and cunning of a Greek!

 

"Long ages since he mixed the clay,

Whose sense of symmetry was such,

The labor of a single day

Immortal grew beneath his touch.

 

"For dreaming while his fingers went

Around this slender neck of mine,

The form of her he loved was blent

With every matchless curve and line.

 

"Her loveliness to me he gave

Who gave unto herself his heart,

That love and beauty from the grave

Might rise and live again in art."

 

And hearing from thy lips this tale

Of love and skill, of art and grace,

Thou seem'st to me no more the frail

Momento of an older race:

 

But in thy form divinely wrought

And figured o'er with fret and scroll,

I dream, by happy chance was caught,

And dwelleth now, that maiden's soul.

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