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Mirrors of steel or silver, gold or glass antique!

Whether in melancholy marble palaces

In some long trance you drew the dreamy loveliness

Of Roman queens, or queens barbarical, or Greek;

Or, further than the bright and sun-pursuing beak

Of argosy might fare, beheld the empresses

Of lost Lemuria; or behind the lattices

Alhambran, have returned forbidden smiles oblique

Of wan, mysterious women!—Mirrors, mirrors old,

Mirrors immutable, impassable as Fate,

Your bosoms held the perished beauty of the past

Nearer than straining love might ever hope to hold;

And fleeing faces, lips too phantom-frail to last,

Found in your magic depth a life re-duplicate.