"ALL WERE LOVELY, AND WITH VIVID SOULS..."

All were lovely, and with vivid souls
fathered their beauty in remorseless things:
in tortured webs of stone, miracles
of breathless craft, the creation of wings.
For some were artificers, flaxen-limbed
and weeping wine from the plumed eyes of angels;
some had eagles' hearts, and were ashamed
of human languor, limbs not like an eagle's.
They were a golden catching of the breath;
silken light moved round them as they walked.
They were all axle-bearers, the wheel
a sunflower, a turning of the earth.
They were all spirits of an hour, an act,
shining in the masks you made beautiful.