Classic Poem

HER GARLAND

O thou who comest to our wintry shade
Gay and light-footed as the virgin Spring,
Before whose shining feet the cherries fling
Their moony tribute, when the sloe is sprayed
With light, and all things musical are made:
O thou who art Spring's daughter, who can bring
Blossom, or song of bird, or anything
To match the youth in which you stand arrayed?
Not that rich garland Meleager twined
In his sun-guarded glade above the blue
That flashes from the burning Tyrian seas:
No, you are cooler, sweeter than the wind
That wakes our woodlands; so I bring to you
These wind-blown blossoms of anemones.

HER VARIETY

Soft as a pale moth flitting in moonshine
I saw thee flutter to the shadowy call
That beckons from the strings of Carneval,
O frail and fragrant image of Columbine:
So, when the spectre of the rose was thine,
A flower wert thou, and last I saw thee fall
In Cleopatra's stormy bacchanal
Flown with the red insurgence of the vine.
O moth, O flower, O maenad, which art thou?
Shadowy, beautiful, or leaping wild
As stormlight over savage Tartar skies?
Such were my ancient questionings; but now
I know that you are nothing but a child
With a red flower's mouth and hazel eyes.

HER SWIFTNESS

You are too swift for poetry, too fleet
For any mused numbers to ensnare:
Swifter than music dying on the air
Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet
Vanishing magic of your flying feet,
Your poised finger, and your shining hair:
Words cannot tell how wonderful you were,
Or how one gesture made a joy complete.
And since you know my pen may never capture
The transient swift loveliness of you,
Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss
Remembering, with a melancholy rapture,
How many dancing-girls ... and poets too ...
Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos.