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Poem by Edith Wharton
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
Edith Wharton's other poems:- With the Tide
- Faun’s Song
- Chartres
- Mould and Vase
- Song (Come, for the leaf is alight)
Poems of the other poets with the same name:
Samuel Coleridge Life ("As late I journey'd o'er the extensive plain") Charlotte Bront¸ Life ("LIFE, believe, is not a dream") Abraham Cowley Life ("Life's a name") Anna Barbauld Life ("Life! I Know Not What Thou Art") Bryan Procter Life ("WE are born; we laugh; we weep") Francis Bacon Life ("THE world's a bubble, and the life of man") William Bryant Life ("Oh Life! I breathe thee in the breeze") Florence Coates Life ("Before we knew thee thou wert with us; ay") Paul Dunbar Life ("A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in") James Johnson Life ("Out of the infinite sea of eternity") Henry Van Dyke Life ("LET me but live my life from year to year") Jones Very Life ("IT is not life upon Thy gifts to live") Mary Robinson Life ("”What is this world?thy school, O misery!") Abram Ryan Life ("A baby played with the surplice sleeve")
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