Classic Poem

Spaced round with perfect Forms,
There is no moon of them that draws
His flood of being, but concentric storms
Heaving the seas, and quaking to their pause.

Tell this to ladies: when a hero man
Assail a thick and scandalous giant
That casts a true shadow in the sun,
And die, but play no truant.

This is more horrible: that the darling egg
Of the chosen people hatch a creature
Of noblest mind and powerful leg
That cannot fathom nor perform his nature.
. . . . . . . . .

The larks' tongues are never stilled
Where the pale spread straw of sunlight lies,
Then what invidious gods have willed
Him to be seized so otherwise?

Birds of the field and beasts of the stable
Are swollen with rapture and make uncouth
Demonstration of joy, which is a babble
Offending the ear of the fervorless youth.

Love — is it the cause? the proud shamed spirit?
Love has slain some whom it possessed,
But his was requited beyond his merit
And won him in bridal the loveliest.

Yet scarcely he issues from the warm chamber,
Flushed with her passion, when cold as dead
Once more he walks where waves beyond number
Of sorrow buffet his curse-hung head.

Whether by street, or in mead full of honey,
Attended by a cloud of the creatures of air
Or shouldering the city's companioning many,
His doom is upon him; and how can he care

For the shapes that would fiddle upon his senses,
Wings and faces and mists that move,
Words, sunlight, the blue air which rinses
The pure pale head which he must love?

And he writhes like an antique man of bronze
That is beaten by furies visible,
Yet he is punished not knowing his sins
And for his innocence walks in hell.

He flails his arms, he moves his lips:
" Rage have I none, cause, time, nor country —
Yet I have travelled land and ships
And knelt my seasons in the chantry. "

So he stands muttering; and rushes
Back to the tender thing in his charge
With clamoring tongue and taste of ashes
And a small passion to feign large.

But let his cold lips be her omen,
She shall not kiss that harried one
To peace! as men are served by women,
Who comfort them in darkness and in sun.