Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/227

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Quot Oculi Tot Mundi.
191

CXXVIII.

The Devotee of Art.

Ask me not why I work with so much zeal To form the thing that seems to me so fair, When over all, in spite of every care,The lines of slow decay will surely steal.I work because I must, because I feel The sway of Art, its inspiration rare, Which leadeth by a broad and lofty stairTo where Truth doth to me herself reveal In regal splendour. This I strive to showThat all who see may render homage due. For, though my work shall fade, yet well I know,  If men her beauty see, it shall not die :In every age they will her face renew, And keep her radiant glories ever nigh.

Henry Allison.

CXXIX.

Quot Oculi Tot Mundi.

The world is as the sense that makes it known: To eyeless creatures, dark eternally; To others, dim, in mazy depths of sea,Beyond the sound of all its surface moan;Narrow to some, as insects ’neath a stone, Or in a tiny crevice, or a bee That murmurs in a flower; but the free,
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