What but the spirit's ladder to God's throne

Is beauty? Oh, from rung to rung to climb,

Till faint becomes the azure's anthem chime

Of planets, multitudinous, or lone,

And Inspiration, drunk with fragrance, blown

From God's rare, inmost garden, wall'd from Time,

Sets free the Sonnet with is wings of rhyme

To carry down the transport, upward known!

Mine is no swaying ladder, like he sea's,

Whose rounds of rollers, raised above Sun-rise,

Lean not on Heaven, hence shattered lie at noon;

For 'tis set firmly on the verities,

Which form God's throne. Ah, there, what joy, my prize!

Would that I had a dove for every boon!