Classic Poem

The five-pointed crude pink tinsel star
Laughed loudly at King Cophetua;

Across the plain that is black as mind,
And limitless, it laughed unkind

To see him whitened like a clown
With the moon's flour, come in a golden crown.

The moon shone softer than a peach
Upon the round leaves in its reach;

The dark air sparkled like a sea —
The beggar maid leaned out through a tree

And sighed (that pink flower-spike full of honey),
" Oh, for Love ragged as Time, with no money!"

Then through the black night the gardener's boy,
As sunburnt as hay, came whispering, " Troy

Long ago was as sweet as the honey-chimes
In the flower-bells jangling into rhymes,

And, oh, my heart's sweet as a honey-hive
Because of a wandering maid, and I live

But to tend the pale flower-bells of the skies
That shall drop down their dew on her sleeping eyes."