Page:Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, 1873.djvu/176

And Love beholding knew not for the same
The shape that led him, nor in face nor name,
     For he was bright and great of thews and fair,
And in Love’s eyes he was not Death but Fame.

Not that grey ghost whose life is empty and bare
And his limbs moulded ont of mortal air,
     A cloud of change that shifts into a shower
And dies and leaves no light for time to wear:

But a god clothed with his own joy and power.
A god rerisen out of his mortal hour
     Immortal, king and lord of time and space,
With eyes that look on them as fîrom a tower.

And where he stood the pale sepulchral place
Bloomed, as new life might in a bloodless face,
     And were men sorrowing came to seek a tomb
With funeral flowers and tears for grief and grace,

They saw with light as of a world in bloom
The portal of the House of Fame illume
     The ways of life wherein we toiling tread,
And watched the darkness as a brand consume.

And through the gates where rule the deathless dead
The sound of a new singer’s soul was shed
     That sang among his kinsfolk, and a beam
Shot from the star on a new ruler’s head.