Classic Poem

Faint for love, I found a dell,
Whose green twilight said in sooth,
" Here lives one will heal thy hell,
Love's calm sister, maiden Truth. "
In this dell no love-notes yearned,
No love-flowers looked up and burned,
But a fountain's musical tone
Rose in swiftly-various moan.
Seemed it, Thought's unfancied fleetness,
Joy's own sadness, Grief's own sweetness,
Hope and laughter, sighs and tears,
Love, Birth, Death, Time's fluent years,
Fate and Memory, — all were found
In that myriad-mingling sound.
And the fountain-stone showed red
With the life of them that bled,
Who each year unsealed the well,
And, unsealing, deathward fell.
With one cup of orient water,
Up rose Truth, the fount's pure daughter,
Naked, and her body was
Soft as dew and clear as glass. —
Naked, yet half-hid from sight
In a robe of woven light,
Which, in sky-assurgent stream,
Like some heaven-returning dream,
Upward grew, and fold by fold,
In its mist of gradual gold.
Veiled her eyes of tearful blue,
Where Love's dayspring trembled through.
" Drink, " she said, " and dream and die.
All are dreams beneath the sky;
Drink, 'tis all I give thee now,
More the Gods may not allow;
Seek me still and keep thy vow. "
Then, as Youth, whose very fleetness
Matches Love's own incompleteness,
Sank this water-visioned sweetness,
And, for all that I could say,
Fountain-hid, flowed fast away;
While I moaned, " Ah! welladay!
Stay, oh, stay. "