Poetry Museum

The Centaur by Clark Ashton Smith

I belong to those manifold Existences
Once known, or once suspected,
That exist no more for man.
Was it not well to flee
Into the boundless realms of legend
Lest man should bridle me?
Sometimes I am glimpsed by poets
Whose eyes have not been blinded
By the hell-bright lamps of cities,
Who have not sent their souls
To be devoured by robot minotaurs
In the infamous Labyrinths of steel and mortar.
I know the freedom of fantastic things,
Ranging in fantasy.
I leap and bound and run
Below another sun.
Was it not well to flee
Long, long ago, lest man should bridle me?

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty by P.B. Shelley

III No voice from some sublimer world hath ever	25
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,	30
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone—like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,	35
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.