Classic Poem

Girl Beside Pool

I

GO

Trouble not this dark pool! In shallower waters
Go dip the splendor of your naked feet.
Above this surface other of love's daughters
Have bent, and found the mirrored picture sweet —
And smiling down on the reflected face
Have turned, and with a lightened spirit gone
To seek their kindred in a sunnier place.
Why do you, only, dare to linger on?
Why do you, only, with mysterious eyes
Look thus into the pool, where far beneath
The daylit world a lonely darkness lies?
Why do you draw a sudden tremulous breath,
And let the girdle and the robe slip down
As though to plumb the secret depths — or drown?

II

STAY

This is a pool whereof the legends are
Lurid, antique, doubtful, and numerous.
To this brink you have wandered from afar
Imagining it as thus, or thus, or thus.
What do you seek — a silence clear to lave
Limbs that are tired of frothy mountain-streams?
Or do you grope toward the terrific wave
That swept the girlhood of your secret dreams? ...
The girdle falls; unbound is the bright hair,
And the pale feet are pausing by the flood ...
There is a solemn hush upon the air
As golden evening, in heroic mood,
Scatters, before the night's immense despair,
Its glow on the dubious pool of this dim wood.English