Classic Poem

Queen of the upper air, crown'd Artemis!
Quick-girdled huntress and moon-diadem'd,
O patroness of all our keen endeavour,
Lady that life from life dost sever,
Hear thou from haunt Eubœan!
Life out of life, seed unto seed thou givest,
Thou potent in the Stygian shades infernal
As in the blue supernal;
Potent thou too in the green habitations
Of teeming Earth, whose nations
Adore in thee their holiest aspirations,
See their wholesome, see their pure
Stroke and striving imaged sure
In thine implacable, chaste, thy virgin meditations.

Thee crocus-vested Caryatides
Intone with long-drawn pæan;
To thee the parsley crown, the pure libation,
The youngling hind, we offer up, so soon
Within her sapphire cave the moon
Swingeth her frosted lamp, and silver stars their station
About her take, and beacon over seas:
To thee come languid mothers, children at their knees,
Thee virgins not yet wedded
Seek first and offer up the tress new-shredded,
And snowy maiden smock;
To thee, as to a rock
Of succour in wild seas, the girdle ivory-headed
That guards the blossom of breasts by men unheeded

When Delos, driven out by stress of weather,
Had roam'd the vasty sea a restless course
Vexèd, so soon that Leto's aching feet
Were cooled, her nine days' anguish ended;
In that great peace that followed
Came order out of chaos, the Sun threw out,
And in the windless caverns of night
Sail'd serene the silver Moon.
Thereon, because a calm miraculous
Follow'd the great twin birth of light and light,
God said, ‘Delos the chosen is and shall be;
Star-ray for all this blind and groping Earth.’
Dreadful thou art and sudden!
Madness is thine and horror unavailing,
The woe of women wailing
(Niobe wailing for her sons and daughters),
And shriek of starven madness:
Anon the swiftsure of death, the closing of waters—
Dark, slippery, swift, pathless, untrod—
Reeling over our heads, swaying our hair
Suckt like weed: bubbles of air
Mark for a moment the place where the wretch of despair
Sank at thy stare.

Thou to be sought in dewy Arcadian haunts,
Soothest, chastest and cleanest!
Where broodeth the dove, where the wood pecker chants
His mocking refrain.
Sacred to thee are birds of the air, and all cattle,
The mountain track, the glade where in battle,
Clashing their antler'd heads, stags beat amain
Earth for the herd's dominion:
Thee glorify the hawks, each strain of the pinion
Is as a hymn of thy praise, swifter than sight!
For in thee the gladness of strength, and beauty of strength,
In thee the clearness of light and throbbing of light,
Have all their crown, O deathless Queen of the night,
Amarynthinian!

All that is gracious and suave in a maid,
All fearless and flawless in chastely carved lips,
All that is proud in her eyes, intent, unafraid,
What there may be in the touch of her finger-tips;
The reticence of her and modesty, keeping apart,
The joyance of swift light motion, throat to the day;
All the glowing abandon that beats in her heart,
All the love she knoweth but shunneth to say:
The rapture of living, love's growing, the babe
That seeketh the breast—
They are thine, Lady, that figurest all, having all
That is pure at thy hest!