Classic Poem

O Love, there is no beauty,
No sorrowful beauty, but I have seen;
There is no island that has gathered sound
Into dim stone from many reeded waters
But we have known.
Heart of my sorrowful heart,
Beauty fades out from sleepy pool to pool
And there is a crying of wings about me
And a crying in me lest I lose you. Glimmer
Around me; sound, O weir, within my heart;
Bring calm on many waters, for I will be hearing
The salmon shatter the air into silver when
The chill grass ends their leaping.
As I was dreaming
Between the pines, she gleamed from windy heights
Pale-browed, in a dark battlemented storm
Of hair. Far down I wander in the woods,
Ankle-deep in autumn, who am light
And lost of the waters.
I have no clan but her;
Being a dream, though the fierce incense burn,
Love, love me, as no woman ever loved
With intellect tense and more passionate
Then the heart, for when the hunger of ourselves
Is over, there is no joy but in the mind.
Think in me for I am become as water
Under the mountain-minds, and when the fire
Of intellect has taken me their minds
Reflect as thought reveals myself. Therefore,
My days are smoke and westward praise of god.
When I eat bread I choke with the fierce salt
Of dream. Therefore I have lived for the sun,
And looked from every cape, and I have been
A runner on swift feet that I might break
The tapes of life.
Drag down your lonely hair
On breasts no child has ever known, for it
Will bring you happy sleep and peace. There is
No peace within my words. I will be secret
Lest the loud powers that move in wine and satire
Gathering themselves from me, the lonely gate
And fire, perplex you with the ancient storm
No woman can endure.
But O there was
No knowing her sad beauty that was made
For candlelight and sleep. Yet thinking I
Forego her, though she has left me bare; I sing
And the mountain hawk is sinking slower through glens
Of lonely air.
I know the steps of love.
Take hands with me, sad dancers in the glen,
For autumn leaves dance best when they are dead,
And we are less than they, O bitter dancers
That dance with bloodied feet.