Classic Poem

These frail, white blooms have lit the Summer night
Like ghosts of beauty that had gone too soon,--
With something less than any glimmering light
That sways and faints and trembles in the moon.
I think the Earth, grown half-regretful, now,
Of faces that were lovely of old time,
Lifts here again dim hands and hair and brow,
In loveliness more fragile than a rhyme.

So that the listening night has somehow learned
A way of prescient waiting through the dark,
For half-forgotten loveliness returned,--
Too frail and dim for eyes like ours to mark
More than a ghostly glimmer on the air,
That once was lighted brows and hands and hair.