Classic Poem

Genius and suffering made thee sacred twice,
Great, angel-hearted dreamer: needless fears
Of love unanswered curved thy smile of sneers,
And froze thy warm young veins with cynic ice,
Poet of piety bound in gyves of vice.
Thy sharp faun-laugh failed to disguise thy tears,
When thy kind vigilant muse that all endears,
Strove from thy soul vague mysteries to entice.
Poor child of song thou couldst not find the day
Amid Life's chaos of doubt, of dream and night,
Nor kneel before Art's altar everywhere —
Doomed from all promise to be thrust away.
Nobly thou didst suspend thy spirit light
Above the gloomy abysses of despair:
When the grim fiends of Pain began to shout,
And rend thy outraged, lacerated breast,
Martyr, thy keen wit lashed with pitiless zest,
The gods and things thy lips once round about,
Naught was held holy to thee where this drought
Had parched thy blood and burned it to unrest,
Thy gall fell fast on the accurst and blessed.
But Love alone was never soiled by doubt:
And the mute, marveling world ere thou didst go,
Saw thy grand agony, and cried: " Behold!
Can this dull Death a dissolution be? "
Nor thy mind's twilight had the brilliant glow,
The splendor and the glamour and the gold
Of an aurora rising from the sea.