Classic Poem

Thunder, with loosened limbs, lay huddled in a swoon.
Lightning had slunk away. There was never a stir in the air.
The trees stood statue-still as of motionless marble hewn,
Save one high branch that was bent before the moon,
By the corse of an Absalom wind hanging heavily by the hair.

Then my love took harp; and her fingers flashed on the golden strings:
Each hand like a living soul conscious and white and free:
Now fleet as a flame, and prophetic of stormy, strenuous things,
Now impotently beating as beat the tortured wings
Of a wounded gull outstretched on the wave of a golden sea.

Her bosom-tide went and came to its limits of pearls and lace,
As surge might ebb and flow on a crescent of silver sand.
The moon moved through the clouds with even, passionless face,
Throwing ivy-shadows like kisses on her face;
And a brown moth came and hovered over her nimble hand.