Page:Le Tombeau de Théophile Gautier, 1873.djvu/178

Who gave thee strength and heat of spirit to pierce
All clouds of form and colour that disperse
     And leave the spirit of beauty to remould
In types of clean chryselephantine verse.

Who gave thee words more golden than fine gold
To carve in shapes more glorious than of old
     And build thy songs up in the sight of time
As statues set in godhead manifold:

In sight and scorn of temporal change and clime
That meet the sun rerisen with refluent rhyme
     As god to god might answer face to face
From lips whereon the morning strikes sublime.

Dear to the god, our god who gave thee place
Among the chosen of days, the royal race,
     The lords of light , whose eyes of old and ears
Saw even on earth and heard him for a space.

There are the souls of those once mortal years
That wrought with fire of joy and light of tears,
     In words divine as deeds that grew thereof,
Such music as he swoons with love who hears.

There are the lives that lighten from above
Our under lives, the spheral souls that move
     Through the ancient heaven of song-illumined air
Whence we that hear them singing die with love.