Number 1 (The Deathless Queen)

In all the realm of Nature and of God
     Beauty, the stately queen,
Never forsakes her throne, o'er sky or sod,
     Gleaming in blue and green i
Nor when the great world in hibernal sleep
Folds the rich herbage and the flowers, that steep
The airs of June with languors sweet as dreams 
Of young love, wandering by her shady streams!

Artist and Poet in her royal hall,
     Who kneel, liege-reverent, at her lightest call, 
Prompt to perform her bidding, and bear forth 
     Her messages to men;
Never forget their loyalty, nor her worth,
     Not even then,
When death seems regnant o'er the buried year, 
And gloom sits sullen in the icy atmosphere.

Who of her parasites could not be true
While earth is sunny and the heavens are blue?
     While every leaf that flutters 
          In morn's awakening breeze,
     Her matin music utters
          In her temple of the trees?
     And every blossom peeping
          From the gray moss and the grass, 
     And every wild brook leaping 
          Adown its rocky pass,—
     Is a joyous priestess bringing
          Earth's incense to her shrine,—
     Is a merry fairy singing
          Her sovereignty divine?
     Ah, then 'tis easy to believe and raise 
          Their gratulating song,
     When the dumb earth is vocal with her praise, 
          And naught in nature does her wrong.

But when the leaves are dead, 
     And all the wooded hills are bare,
          Save only where
Some feathery cone-tree lifts a gloomier head, 
     When maniac Winter from his arctic lair, 
          In stormy wrath descending,
Clutches the naiads by their streaming hair,
          And binds them to the rocks
Knotted and stiff with withered foliage blending;
          Only the clear-eyed poet then,—
True Artist, armed with pencil or with pen,—
          Fails not in loving duty
At the veiled throne of unsurrendered Beauty.

The moth and painted butterfly
May vanish when the lilies die;
     The rhymer of a gentle lay
That flutters round the flame of fashion, 
     Only to perish in the lightning-play 
Of a diviner passion,
     May sing in sunshine or beneath 
     The moony smile of summer eves,
But deeper insight yields unfailing faith,—
     And deathless loyalty alone believes.