Classic Poem

—I KNOW a lovely lady who is dead,
A wreath of lilies bound her charming head,
Her corn-flower eyes were closed as if in sleep,
And on her lips lay silence gay and deep.

No more the garden where she used to walk
Is filled at dusk with laughter and with talk,
No more the swaying fireflies in their glowing
Lantern to left and right her slender going.

I know a lovely lady who is dead,
And fools say there is nothingness instead.

Nothing of all this loveliness? . . . poor dear,
Beauty is not a matter of a year.

Beauty is like the surf that never ceases,
Beauty is like the night that never dies,
Beauty is like a forest pool where peace is
And a recurrent waning planet lies:
Beauty is like the stormy star that traces
His golden footsteps on the edge of rain;
When beauty has been vanquished in all places,
Suddenly beauty stirs your heart again.

She was the purport of innumerable lovers
Who down some woodland road were glad in May,
When leaves were thick and in the orchard covers
The robin and the chaffinch had their say:
She was the toll of countless men who dreamed—
The small hours heard the scratching of the mice—
In hidden room or tower until it seemed
They stood upon a lonely precipice

And felt a thin clear heady breeze that brought
The truth and peace and beauty that they sought:
She was the breath of myriad mountain pyres
That burned beneath the blueness of the dark:
Beauty is earth and air and many fires,
Runs with the water, sings with each new lark.
She was a pause upon a road that never ends,
Beauty descended on her, and descends.

I know a lovely lady who is dead,
But she was these, and these are in her stead.
. . . Out of the slime and out of endless sleeping,
Into the grayness of the earlier earth,
Crawled such a creature blind and helpless, keeping
Some unknown assignation of her birth.
Never she knew what moved her to her trying,
What would not let her be what she began,
Only a voice in the darkness crying,
Only a wish that wished itself a man.
The wish is here, the wish is ever growing:
The winds are here, the winds are ever blowing.

And her sweet years were part of all this too,
She who could catch and store each moment's aim,
Dawn when she opened windows on the blue,
And midnight when Orion marched in flame;
Kind conversation, merriment, and wit,
Old friends who knew her wit was ever kind,
And tea in winter when the logs were lit
And radiance filled the room and filled her mind;
And dogs, and games, and horses silken-throated
Along a ribboned road that danced with spring
When every hedge to green-brier is devoted,
For to her thinking all and everything
Was music; and with music soft and bright
Often she plucked the echoes from the night.
Her body was a casket white and slim.
I would that I had been her very lover,
Ah the hushed hours when, she with him,
Her young voice whispered over again and over!

Yet now when evening falls and it is late,
And a thin moon cuts clearness from the West,
And Scorpio rising by my eastern gate,
Along the rim throws high his sparkling crest,
I am no longer sorrowful but glad,
Since I was here when beauty found this niche;
Many a man great loveliness has had
But none with loveliness has been more rich.
A little, ample space was mine to know
What loveliness is, and why it cannot go.

I know a lovely lady who is dead,
Beauty is hers, and she is beauty instead.