Classic Poem

The mountains were both far and high,
Their jagged peaks along the sky
Broke it like splintered porphyry.

I stood beneath a cherry-tree
Whose thick leaves fluttered ceaselessly,
And there were cherry clusters — three.

Prone at my feet was one who slept;
At my right hand, a maid who wept;
And at my left, a youth who kept

Vigil before a naked sword
Which gleamed and sparkled on the sward
As though it were a holy word.

An eery moonlight lit the place,
Just bright enough to show each face
And each lithe body's proper grace.

The weeping maiden raised her head:
" I die for want of food, " she said,
And in her famished gaze I read

The wasting of her life in tears.
Her face was shattered as though years
Had nicked it with an iron shears.

" Peace, Mournful Lady, " I replied,
" Within these leaves dark cherries hide. "
I raised my hand, but in a stride,

Catching his sword up, so he came,
The youth. His helmet burst to flame,
And on it shone a fearful name.

The maiden moaned and sank beneath
The tree's foot, like a fallen wreath
Of myrtle-buds, stripped of their sheath.

Once more we were as we had been:
One wept, one slept, one watched his keen
Sword lying in the grasses green.

Then she who slumbered stirred and woke,
And throwing back her ample cloak
She lifted heavy eyes and spoke:

" I faint for hunger, " whispered she,
" And though above me I can see
Cherries, I am spent utterly.

Reach me the fruit for kindness, so
My blood may once more course and flow
As it was used, oh, long ago. "

The words were faint as is the jar
Of air behind a falling star
Felt in a forest where ghosts are.

" Be still, " I answered, " if I fail
To succour you, no burning mail
Will be the force to which I quail. "

Brave words to whip my spirit on.
Under the leaves the cherries shone.
A moment and I should have done.

But, as the thought came, so did he,
And stood beside the cherry-tree,
And struck his sword upon her knee.

Even while she fell, he went his way,
And laid his sword as erst it lay,
And mournfully awaited day.

Then, drearily, above the rim
Of mountains, rose a sun so dim
I only knew day watching him.

For, as the morning slowly grew,
He took another ghastly hue,
And what was pale had turned to blue.

His corselet was corroded rust,
Between his greaves a briar thrust
Its long head up, his eyes were dust.

His sword still lay upon the ground,
But all at once it moved and wound
Among the grass-blades to a mound

Of heaped-up earth, and entered in,
Inch after inch, for what had been
A sword was now become a thin

Long line of ants, who crawled and went
With the strange, multiple consent
Of myriads working one intent.

Sick and distraught, I turned to where
The weeping maid had been, and there
Was nothing but a gusty air

Which blew upon a ruined town.
Tall girders, stripped of stone, looked down
On crumbled streets where weeds had grown.

A doorway opened a gaunt eye
Upon the rats which scurried by.
A roofless window watched the sky.

And all the frayed and brittle soil
Of that dead city seemed to boil
With insects laden down with spoil.

Again I turned and sought the spot
Where one had slumbered, and my hot
Eyes rested on a graveyard plot.

A devastating plague of sand
Had swept it, piled on either hand
Were broken headstones, and a band

Of plundering ants crept in and out
Among the graves and round about.
The very air smarted with drought.

The valley burned without a sun,
Gasping beneath a twilight, dun
And twitched with heat, through which gnats spun.

And, sweeping it, my eyes could see
No semblance of a cherry-tree,
The plain was flat as plain could be.

But where that long night I had stood
Lay a sarcophagus of wood
Covered with ants as red as blood.

Then suddenly a frozen cry
Tingled along the brazen sky,
And he who uttered it was I.

Tangled in scorching sand I fled.
The mountains closed about my head.
The stifled air proclaimed me dead.

I woke — for I had slept, it seemed.
My head ached and I must have dreamed.
Above me, cherry blossoms gleamed

A slant of whiteness to a sky
So blue it glared bewilderingly.
I crushed an ant and wondered why.