Classic Poem

All loved and lovely women dear to rhyme:
Thais, Cassandra, Helen and their fames,
Burn like tall candles through forgotten time,
Lighting the Past's dim arras with their names.
Around their faces wars the eager dark
Wherein all other lights are sunken now,
Yet, casting back, the seeker still may mark
A flame of hair, a bright immortal brow.

Surely, where they have passed, one after one,
Wearing their radiance to the darkened room, —
Surely, newcomers to Oblivion
May still descry in that all-quenching gloom,
Rare faces lovely, lifted and alight,
Like tapers burning through the windy night.