Why hast thou nothing in thy face? <br />Thou idol of the human race, <br />Thou tyrant of the human heart, <br />The flower of lovely youth that art; <br />Yea, and that standest in thy youth <br />An image of eternal Truth, <br />With thy exuberant flesh so fair, <br />That only Pheidias might compare, <br />Ere from his chaste marmoreal form <br />Time had decayed the colours warm; <br />Like to his gods in thy proud dress, <br />Thy starry sheen of nakedness. <br /> <br />Surely thy body is thy mind, <br />For in thy face is nought to find, <br />Only thy soft unchristen’d smile, <br />That shadows neither love nor guile, <br />But shameless will and power immense, <br />In secret sensuous innocence. <br /> <br />O king of joy, what is thy thought? <br />I dream thou knowest it is nought, <br />And wouldst in darkness come, but thou <br />Makest the light where’er thou go. <br />Ah yet no victim of thy grace, <br />None who e’er long’d for thy embrace, <br />Hath cared to look upon thy face.<br /><br />Robert Seymour Bridges<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eros-16/
