Classic Poem

And this then is all of the sweet life she promised!
And this then is all of the fair life I painted!
Dead, ashen fruit, of the dark Dead Sea border!
Ah yes, and worse by a thousand numbers,
Since that can be cast away at willing,
While desolate life with its dead hope buried
Clings on to the clay, though the soul despise it.

Back, backward, to-night, is memory traversing,
Over the desert my weary feet travelled—
Thick with the wrecks of my dear heart-idols—
And toppling columns of my ambition—
Red with the best of my hot heart's purple.

Down under the hill and under the fir-tree,
By the spring, and looking far out in the valley,
She stands as she stood in the glorious Olden,
Swinging her hat in her right hand dimpled.
The other hand toys with a honeysuckle
That has tiptoed up and tried to kiss her.
Her dark hair is twining her neck and her temples
Like tendrils some beautiful Parian marble.

‘O eyes of lustre and love and passion!
O radiant face with the sea-shell tinted!
White cloud with the sunbeams tangled in it!’
I cried, as I stood in the dust beneath her,
And gazed on the God my boy-heart worshipped
With a love and a passion a part of madness.
‘Dreamer,’ she said, and a tinge of displeasure
Swept over her face that I should disturb her,
‘All of the fair world is spread out before you:
Go down and possess it, with love and devotion,
And heart ever tender and touching as woman's,
And life shall be sweet as the first kiss of morning.’

I turned down the pathway, blinded no longer;
Another was coming, tall, manly, and bearded.
I built me a shrine in the innermost temple—
In the innermost rim of the red pulsing heart
And placed her therein, sole possessor and priestess,
And carved all her words on the walls of my heart.

They say that he wooed her there under the fir-tree
And won her one eve, when the katy-dids mocked her.
Well, he may have a maiden and call her Merinda;
But mine is the one that stands there for ever
Leisurely swinging her hat by the ribbons.

They say she is wedded. No, not my Merinda,
For mine stands for ever there under the fir-tree
Gazing and swinging her hat by the ribbons.
They tell me her children reach up to my shoulder.
'Tis false. I did see her down under the fir-tree
When the stars were all busy a-weaving thin laces
Out of their gold and the moon's yellow tresses,
Swinging her hat as in days of the Olden.
True, I didn't speak to or venture to touch her—
Touch her! I sooner would pluck the sweet Mary,
The mother of Jesus, from arms of the priesthood
As they kneel at the altar in holy devotion.

And was it for this that my heart was kept tender?
Fashioned for thine, O sacristan maiden!—
That coarse men could pierce my warm heart to the purple?
That vandals could enter and burn out its freshness?
That rude man could trample it into the ashes?
O was it for this that my heart was kept open?
I looked in a glass, not the heart of man-mortal.
Whose was the white soul I seen there reflecting?
But trample the grape that the wine may flow freely!

Beautiful priestess, mine, mine only, for ever!
You still are secure. They know not your temple.
They never can find it, or pierce it, or touch it,
Because in their hearts they know no such a temple.
I turn my back on them like Enos the Trojan.
Much indeed leaving in wild desolation,
But bearing one treasure alone that is dearer
Than all they possess or have fiercely torn from me;
A maiden that stands looking far far down the valley
Swinging her hat by its long purple ribbons.