English Poetry. Edith Wharton. Life. Эдит Уортон.

Life

LIFE, like a marble block, is given to all,
A blank, inchoate mass of years and days,
Whence one with ardent chisel swift essays
Some shape of strength or symmetry to call;
One shatters it in bits to mend a wall;
One in a craftier hand the chisel lays,
And one, to wake the mirth in Lesbia's gaze,
Carves it apace in toys fantastical.

But least is he who, with enchanted eyes
Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be,
Muses which god he shall immortalize
In the proud Parian's perpetuity,
Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies
That he night cometh wherein none shall see.

Edith Wharton’s other poems:

Poems of other poets with the same name (Стихотворения других поэтов с таким же названием):

Samuel Coleridge (Сэмюэл Кольридж) Life (“As late I journey’d o’er the extensive plain”)

Charlotte Brontё (Шарлотта Бронте) Life (“LIFE, believe, is not a dream”)

Abraham Cowley (Абрахам Каули) Life (“Life’s a name”)

Anna Barbauld (Анна-Летиция Барбо) Life (“Life! I Know Not What Thou Art”)

Bryan Procter (Брайан Проктер) Life (“WE are born; we laugh; we weep”)

Francis Bacon (Фрэнсис Бэкон) Life (“THE world’s a bubble, and the life of man”)

Florence Coates (Флоренс Коутс) Life (“Before we knew thee thou wert with us; ay”)

Paul Dunbar (Пол Данбар) Life (“A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in”)

James Johnson (Джеймс Джонсон) Life (“Out of the infinite sea of eternity”)

Henry Van Dyke (Генри Ван Дайк) Life (“LET me but live my life from year to year”)