Classic Poem

It was night, with storm and darkness, and a few stars dimly shining
'Midst the sable clouds that drifted, all a-wrack along the sky,
And the wind from out the North-land came like warring hosts combining,
To besiege an ancient city, with defiant battle-cry.

From the watch-tower and the ramparts it went shrieking down the river; Shrieking 'round the hoary mountain, and across the dreary wold,
Where the larches and the lindens clasped their bare arms, with a shiver,
And moaned like living creatures, suffering with piercing cold.

On that night, a certain shining, as of golden banners trailing
From the windows of a palace, fell along the the midnight air;
And the listener heard, at intervals, above the tempest's wailing,
A murmurous sound of voices, music, mirth and revel there.

Bright within the red light trembled over peerless forms and faces—
Merry feet kept time to harmony on woof of Turkish loom;
Fairest tropic flowers breathed sweetness from the lips of costly vases,
Until all the air was eloquent with music and perfume.

There were tresses bound with diamonds, cheeks aglow with joyous feeling;
Softly whispered words, whose witchery wrought love's delicious spell;
Jewelled fingers clasping tenderly, and glorious eyes revealing
The impassioned thoughts that maiden lips would never dare to tell.

Sweetest song and silver-chorded sound of harp and viol blending,
Interweaving with soft cadences all tenderest words of love,
As if hitherward the angel Israfel, from heaven descending,
Came to charm the soul with melody to brighter worlds above.

There were fine, old, famous pictures, shrined in antique frames, carved quaintly;
Psyche in her wondrous beauty, Niobe in her despair;
The dear Child-God, and His mother, with her brow so pure and saintly,
All illumined with the holiness that made a halo there.

And statues, marvelous statues, modelled from the soul's ideal,
With the longing love of genius for the beauty not of earth,
In their purple-shadowed niches, grew so life-like and so real,
That, in gazing on them, one forgot they had not mortal birth.

In gay mazes went the dancers—softly sounded harp and viol;
Timid Love won sweet responses—crimson wine flowed sparkling bright:
Until Pleasure, never measuring time by tell-tale clock or dial,
Had stolen away the lightsome hours of that long winter night.