Classic Poem

The sphinx must needs surrender
When its riddle was guessed away;
Could I have been less tender,
When mine was guessed one day?

That day I built and decked with bloom,
And ever so dainty art,
A snowy shrine in a little room
In the house I call my heart.

Often a little girl enters there,
Her face each day I see;
But no one else the door must dare,
She, only, has the key.

And yet 'tis an illusion,
Like the lake in the desert sand.
God only knows how the world may use
The girl I thought so grand.

The veil of the future I cannot part,
Yet something makes me trust
That after this house I call my heart
Has crumbled away to dust.

When the world no more may draw her,
When its mask has passed away,
I shall know her as I saw her
On that one sweet, summer day.