Classic Poem

The dark is round me like a bed;
I push the hair from off my face:
That blue line, like a little thread
Is all the hint in this deep place
That the sun still shines overhead.

I wait the moment it begins,
From where I crouch on hands and knees
I watch it as it fills and thins
And think I hear the wistful trees:
It seemeth summer till it dims.

Siena was the stony hold
Where I was cradled. Ere my years
Twice seven winter times had told
Set in a moon that froze my tears,
And I, that knew not youth, was old.

He ringed me on the wedding hand,
For thus were maidens bought and sold,
And dower'd me with house and land,
And kist me: but my lips were cold,
My knees shook that I scarce could stand.

My fief was all that windy house
Whose entry lock was like a fang;
Alone I was with bat and mouse
Whenas the door had ceased its clang,
And him that was the lord of us.

Sometimes he call'd me — little child, —
And set his long hand to my hair;
And he would laugh when I lookt wild,
To eye him like a crippled hare.
I feared him chiefest when he smiled.

His smile was like a starven man's
That waits until his friend shall die,
And laughs as madmen laugh, and plans
His glut of hatred by-and-by,
And feeds his hunger as he scans.

Still in my vigils I can view
Maremma glimmer like a sea
Towards that other sea whose hue
And limit touch eternity,
And touching melt blue into blue.

He was beside me those long days,
His terror made me cold o' nights:
He scarcely spoke or fixèd gaze
Upon me, yet the shifty lights
Of his chill eyes followed my ways.

Once he did laugh on me, then frown'd
Because I ran and clutcht the door;
Once more he laught that day he found
My eyes grown hollow: yet once more —
'Tis that which haunts me underground.

I am too thin to rise and wail,
I am too chill to be athirst;
I cannot pray, I am too frail
To shriek my sorrow if I durst:
No one can see how I am pale.

I have not grace enough to die;
I have no friend; there is no God.
I bit my lip till it ran dry
To write my legend in my blood
On the bare wall 'gainst which I lie.

That on the day when I am dead —
For to all men cometh to die
At last — who leaneth o'er my bed
With a struck light to see me by,
May know this dark made me afraid.