Classic Poem

VI.

She stooped her head, whose tresses hid
Her clenched and trembling hand;
She felt her heart swell proudlier
Than in its purple band;
And such the rippling stir of life
Upon her earnest face,
It seemed a stormy spirit filled
A form of marble grace.

VII.

" And let, " she thought, " the poet bear
His sounding lyre and song,
And still through temple, field, and mart
My tuneful fame prolong,
For if I but repay the strain
With word or look of praise,
'Tis then the last of love and verse,
The first of slavery's days.

VIII.

" Then with the boisterous wedding comes
The dark, unhonored life;
The worshipped goddess fading then
Is known an earthly wife;
And all the longing sighs that now
In all his utterance play,
But like a tedious burden round
An old-remembered lay.

IX.

" And if at last from long disdain,
And cold averted eyes,
To other lands and cities now
The bard in anguish flies,
To other springs and hills and woods
And other ears than these,
My name in melody will sound,
And sail on distant seas.

X.

" And if in cave, or desert path,
Or at triumphal feast,
The journeying minstrel sinks in death,
From hopeless toil released;
Upon his tomb be this inscribed, —
That he for Myrto died;
And let his last lament record
Her beauty and her pride. "