Classic Poem

In the most intimate years your gables grew
And stood by Oxford on their watery hill;
When all the days were spacious, they were still
A country home of music undisturbed.
You keep your life aloof from common things,
Lovely and strange in beauty of its own;
Like a tall Saint who clasps upon her breast
A Pindar hidden by a palimpsest,
And both ordain a life austere and curbed;
Fixed in the change, and timeless as a shrine
Upon the border of a Grecian town
Where there is calm beyond the reach of gold.
My mind seeks beauty and it dwells on you
Under the elms — and all the air was Spring's,
A leaven of silence in the misty dew
Leavening the light, the shadow leavening,
Your cloak and that tall feather, white under blue —
Walking beside a poet in the evening.