Phèdre

To Sarah Bernhardt

How vain and dull this common world must seem

      To such a One as thou, who should'st have talked

      At Florence with Mirandola, or walked

Through the cool olives of the Academe:

Thou should'st have gathered reeds from a green stream

      For Goat-foot Pan's shrill piping, and have played

      With the white girls in that Phæacian glade

Where grave Odysseus wakened from his dream.

Ah! surely once some urn of Attic clay

      Held thy wan dust, and thou hast come again

      Back to this common world so dull and vain,

For thou wert weary of the sunless day,

      The heavy fields of scentless asphodel,

      The loveless lips with which men kiss in Hell.