Classic Poem

Annunciata stands
On the flat lands
Under the pear-tree
(Jangling sweetly). See,
The curé-blàck leaves
Are cawing like a rook. . . .
Annunciata grieves,
‘No young man will look
At me with my harsh jangling hair
Pink as the one pear
(A flapping crude fish tinsel-pink
Flapping across the consciousness
Like laughter) and my tattered dress.’
Then from the brink
Of the deep well,
Sounding like a bell,
From the castles under water
The old men seek the beggar's daughter. . . .
Some were wrinkled gray
From suicide grown gay
And smiling, some were seen
With ivy limbs green
And gnarled like the water. . . .
‘Dance a pavane, beggar's daughter.’ . . .
They wooed her with book;
And the water's tuneless bell
Wooed her as well—
A water-hidden sound achieves;
And cawing like a rook
Were the curé-breast of dew was gray
Upon round leaves—they fled away.
Only a moaning sound
From the castles that lie drowned
Beneath the fruit-boughs of the water
Reached the beggar's daughter.