Classic Poem

Ever, through darkness and unmeasured gloom,
When after soft arms' scent and warm embrace
I meet the eyeless mute deliberate face
That waits and threatens where no bounteous bloom
Of summer fills the fields no suns illume,
May I bear with me to the joyless place
Eternal dreams of one white goddess grace
Whom I have served, — and will serve to the tomb.

For she the queen, when once her lips have smiled,
Forbids the soul she smiles on ever to flee:
She lures him as the flowers' smile lures a child
And sways him with most flowerlike sovereignty;
She who first sprang from wavelets undefiled,
Moulded of rose-bloom and the foam-white sea.