Classic Poem

You stared at me and you never spoke;
My cool heart broke like a bubble;
You held a dagger beneath your cloak
So thin you could bend it double.

Your eyes were empty of any life,
But still you were smiling, smiling;
And your smile was nicked like the edge of your knife
And curled like an iron filing.

A little batswing on either foot
Was horror, and helter-skelter
I sweated and ran, who had learned to put
My head on your breast for shelter.

Three strong men stood up on a hill
At the rim of the first day's cycle;
I thought that the third was God until
The other two called him Michael.

Feathers of sky veiled every arm;
I hurried to half-believe him
When Michael shouted “He means no harm!”
And the other two cried “Forgive him!”

The soles of my feet were stayed in space;
I looked back over my shoulder;
And the devil himself had covered your face
With silver, or something colder.

The second day had a golden tinge;
Its dawn was a door to enter
Through a vision of palms in a wavy fringe
To red-hot sand in the centre.

A lion slept in a stripe of shade,
With his head bowed down on his bosom;
The locks of his mane were roughed and rayed
Like the leaves of a tawny blossom.

From bread of flesh and water of blood,
With innocent eyes of wonder,
He rose; his voice was a river in flood,
Its echo an arch of thunder.

Like the green sea racing the jungle ran
To break on the palm-tree hedges,
And the hunched gorilla that hates a man
Leapt out from the jungle's edges.

Prince of the powers of the air,
He dropped from deep dominions;
His shoulder-blades were plumed with hair
As an angel's are with pinions.

He stretched the leather between his lungs;
He beat with his fist for hammer;
The vines were heavy with spotted tongues
That stiffened and shook to clamour.

The indolent lion spoke at length;
“Can this spider-web image hurt you?
This ramshackle atomy lacking strength
And brave commensurate virtue?

“Many and many a time I've starved
On bones that were surely bigger
Than this poor filagree flayed and carved
To the shape of a human figure.

“The stuff of his spirit escapes my scorn;
He is nothing and less than nothing;
I could make of his body my drinking-horn
But I turn from that thirst with loathing.

“Listen! The knots of his sinews crack;
Look! How his thews are meagre;
But you have ridden astride my back
And laid to my breast a leaguer.

“Not by a smile and a rotten rib
Shall a daughter of mine be frightened,
For you have slept in my stony crib
And the strings of your heart are tightened.”