Classic Poem

Hail, O Madonna! my woman, my lady!
Mine by my poesy, mine by my dreams!
Not as a nymph of the leafily shady
Myth of the wilderness, nor as the limbs
Nude of a naiad in fountains and streams
Glimpsed as she flashes, and plashes, and swims,
But as a real live woman, Madonna!

Future-forefeeling old poets, then seeing
Nowhere in all the world lady like mine,
Feigned an ideal aerial being,
Oread or dryad, that, piped to by Pan,
Danced in the solitudes, where the divine
Passion of beauty has visited man
Always in guise of my woman, Madonna!

Or the delicious keen charm of illusion
(Rapturous chase of the soul after sense)
Fabled they, dreaming the plunge and the fusion
Into clear waters of womanly shapes:
Bosoms that hid in the crystal defense,
Bodies that made hurried bashful escapes
Into the fountains, revealed thee, Madonna!

Thou art the mystery, thou art the beauty,
Left to the world from the world's age of gold;
Thou art the thought holding heroes to duty;
Thou art that secret in music and rhyme
Which has been guessed at, but never been told;
Thou art the dreamed-of and longed-for of time,
Glory of womanhood, lady Madonna!