XIV

THE LAST OF THE GRACES.

Methought that I was wandering in a room,Whose air was naught but music and perfume;A thousand lights were flaming o'er my head ;And all around me flitted feet, whose treadRoused not the listening echoes, for each boundWas but the mute response to softest sound.Sweet eyes, whose looks were language, and bland

tongues,Whose accents died into Eolian songs,Were there the things of worship ; and man's sighThe incense of his heart's idolatry.High swelled each breast within that proud saloon;For midnight there was Fashion's sparkling noon :The vain beheld a sun in every gem ;—That room was all the universe to them.But they were not the happy:—who can hideTh' intranquil heart?—their looks their lips belied.Stiff in the gorgeous masquerade of state,The miserably rich, the joyless great,The beautiful, whose beauty was a careMore deep than wrinkles, sighed, yet would not shareE'en the dull calm which mere exhaustion throwsO'er silken couches—^soft without repose.Foremost, and most conspicuous of the dance,J now beheld three glowing forms advance,