Classic Poem

Her forehead through the siege of summer heat
Palely sustained a burden of black hair;
Black brows made heavy bridges to a pair
Of candid eyes unfathomably sweet.
The noon burned clearly in the empty street;
Dazed, with a dreamy step she came to where
They drank in the inn-arbour on the square;
And in the dust none heard the tired feet,
Till, shyly taking place before the gang,
She had unslung a mandolin and sang.

She sang of evenings cool when the early star
Winks from the pale-green porches of the night
On silken seas where azure faints to white:
The doors of hushèd senses just ajar
Watching the dark remake what day did mar,
Take in the tender thrice-refinèd light,
And feel how dust and herb and tree requite
Grace with the grace of breathing all they are.
Slow veils drop off the soul and leave her bare
Lured out a-tremble on the kindred air.

What of a tan-faced boy and a blue-eyed maid
In the owlet light slow strolling arm in arm,
Half-drunk with love, yet dashed with sweet alarm?
Her words with his like April sparrows played,
His eye in the dusk her melting eye waylaid:
'Tis cheek to cheek, 'tis lip to lip—what harm
If hives of hisses break away and swarm?
Lasses and lads were each for other made.
Glittering eyes told tales of hearts bewitched,
And fingers, as they filled the glasses, twitched.

Once more she sang: the passion of her numbers
Strained out the shallow anguish in the strings;
Sob in the throat and tear in the eye she sings:
Whose is the fault if Autumn leaf encumbers
Coldly the pleasant place of noonday slumbers?
Whose fault when back to sea the floodtide swings?
Love came dancing and all his toes were wings,
But sick and lame and empty home he lumbers.
So fancy free (not his the blow he dealt)
He roams, a dead heart dangling at his belt;

And I unburied walk the stranger's road
Hunting a penny and a human tear.

The old complaint of life was loud in the ear,
Over the hills forgotten sadness flowed;
Deep in the veins of earth the secret lode
Of sadness dulled the lovely fields with fear,
That sours the sun and knows the green for sere:
Life in each heart confessed the tale she showed.
Then some went slowly to the tryst, but none
Marked when again she took the dust and sun.

Her forehead through the siege of summer heat
Palely sustained a burden of black hair;
Black brows made heavy bridges to a pair
Of candid eyes unfathomably sweet.
The noon burned clearly in the empty street;
Dazed, with a dreamy step she came to where
They drank in the inn-arbour on the square;
And in the dust none heard the tired feet,
Till, shyly taking place before the gang,
She had unslung a mandolin and sang.

She sang of evenings cool when the early star
Winks from the pale-green porches of the night
On silken seas where azure faints to white:
The doors of hushèd senses just ajar
Watching the dark remake what day did mar,
Take in the tender thrice-refinèd light,
And feel how dust and herb and tree requite
Grace with the grace of breathing all they are.
Slow veils drop off the soul and leave her bare
Lured out a-tremble on the kindred air.

What of a tan-faced boy and a blue-eyed maid
In the owlet light slow strolling arm in arm,
Half-drunk with love, yet dashed with sweet alarm?
Her words with his like April sparrows played,
His eye in the dusk her melting eye waylaid:
'Tis cheek to cheek, 'tis lip to lip—what harm
If hives of hisses break away and swarm?
Lasses and lads were each for other made.
Glittering eyes told tales of hearts bewitched,
And fingers, as they filled the glasses, twitched.

Once more she sang: the passion of her numbers
Strained out the shallow anguish in the strings;
Sob in the throat and tear in the eye she sings:
Whose is the fault if Autumn leaf encumbers
Coldly the pleasant place of noonday slumbers?
Whose fault when back to sea the floodtide swings?
Love came dancing and all his toes were wings,
But sick and lame and empty home he lumbers.
So fancy free (not his the blow he dealt)
He roams, a dead heart dangling at his belt;

And I unburied walk the stranger's road
Hunting a penny and a human tear.

The old complaint of life was loud in the ear,
Over the hills forgotten sadness flowed;
Deep in the veins of earth the secret lode
Of sadness dulled the lovely fields with fear,
That sours the sun and knows the green for sere:
Life in each heart confessed the tale she showed.
Then some went slowly to the tryst, but none
Marked when again she took the dust and sun.