"We willingly inebriate our eyes
With ether's sheen and faultless feathered blooms
Our sparkling silver sports its glimmered guise
Untarnished as an angel's perfect plumes
How joyfully the flitting lovers' trill
Arouses in our hearts a purity--
How gluttonously garnished hearts can swill
And sway with gleaming dream, eternity!--
But prowling fowl mistake for soiled soot
The butterfly with blackened, blemished blot
And callused, thickened oak with gnarled root
Escapes unscathed from parasites and rot.
And thus for breathless metal, gleaming cast;
One draught of acid oxygen its last."