Classic Poem

1

Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Sing on, my soul, the world beneath thee swinging,
A bough of song above a sea of sleep.

2

Who is the lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise
For whom all my life's but the string
Of a rosary painful of days;

Which I count with a curious smile
As a miser who hoardeth his gain,
Though, a madhearted spendthrift the while,
I but gather to waste again.

Yea, I pluck from the tree of the years,
As a country maid greedy of flowers,
Each day brimming over with tears,
And I scatter like petals its hours;

And I trample them under my feet
In a frenzy of cloven-hoofed swine,
And the breath of their dying is sweet,
And the blood of their hearts is as wine.

O, I throw me low down on the ground
And I bury my face in their death,
And only I rise at the sound
Of a mind as it scattereth,

As it scattereth sweetly the dried
Leaves withered and brittle and sere
Of days of old years that have died —
And, O, it is sweet in my ear!

And I rise me and build me a pyre
Of the whispering skeleton things,
And my heart laugheth low with the fire,
Laugheth high with the flame as it springs;

And above in the flickering glare
I mark me the boughs of my tree,
My tree of the years, growing bare,
Growing bare with the scant days to be

Then I turn to my beads and I pray
For the axe at the root of the tree —
Last flower, last bead — ah! last day
That shall part me, my darling, from thee!

And I pray for the knife on the string
Of this rosary painful of days:
But who is the Lady I sing?
Ah, how can I tell thee her praise!