Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

Speech after long silence; it is right, All other lovers being estranged or dead . . . That we descant and yet again descant Upon the supreme theme of Art and Song: Bodily decrepitude is wisdom; young We loved each other and were ignorant.

Everything that man esteems Endures a moment or a day. Love's pleasure drives his love away, The painter's brush consumes his dreams.

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch.

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering.

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.

Wine enters through the mouth, Love, the eyes. I raise the glass to my mouth, I look at you, I sigh.