Classic Poem

Oh , Girl, whom I beheld so radiant-eyed
Beside the proud glad man who bent his head
Over your voice, tOhear each word you said,
To you, a new betrothèd bride,
A day and night my thoughts have backward fled;
For I, who caught upon a city street,
The heaven in two faces flashing by,
Dreamed on the instant of a starlit sky,
And of a garden sweet,
Where a fountain near a balcony
Sang like the music of a serenade
As through the parting curtains came
One whose rapture was a flame,—
“The light that never was on land or sea.”
The look of Juliet was on your face,
But oh, it was her very grace,
Thrown over you like some transcending veil
That made your beauty mystic as a dream
Of all fair loves that are, and that have been,
And still shall be, when you lie cold and pale
In a garden where white poppies gleam,
And lips no more may kisses lose or win.
For you the cup runs over, and for you
Love shapes a vista of unlived sweet years
To wander, dreaming, through;
And thoughts of little children bring no fears,
But the proud joy that you may live again
In lives sprung from your own,
Drawing your souls with holiness and pain
And the first moan,
Into a dearer kinship than you yet have known;
For you the sun is but a glory shed
From that which burns too brightly in your breast;
And you are drunken with the gladdest wine
Ever from an immortal vine
The winged feet of men and maids have pressed,
From purple fruit and red.

Oh, lovers of the crowded street, you pass,
Thinking the world, in pretty arrogance,
Blooms with no other such divine romance,—
But other stars have fallen on the grass!
And I who loved you gladly for love's sake,
Give you a little pity from my heart,
(Which you will scorn to take!)
For new and thrilling as may be your joy
It cannot be so rich as mine own part.
Nor can it be the same deep draught I drain,
Oh, my Sweet Boy,—
With closéd eyes and happy pain,
When taken in your sudden swift embrace,—
Your kiss falls on my face!