Classic Poem

There should have been stars to make your brow more fair,
Each one a gem,
Like links and clasps of some bright diadem,
Dull gold or silver, resting on your hair,
Whence wavy streamers flow,
Such as the Northern Lights in winter midnight sow.

Your foot was delicate, the instep slender;
Lone you went by,
But modest was your mien and proudly shy.
Like to a dream-spun vision, brightly tender,
Which hovered in the air,
You seemed enfolded all in starry radiance rare.

Music and sorrow glimmered around your face;
But wistful, chill,
The song that scarcely from your lips could thrill.
Nor might your form, though moulded all of grace,
Follow your spirit's motion,
To show its free delight like billows on the ocean.

Your head was bent, a reed before the blast;
Your cheek was pale
As palest flowers in a woodland vale;
But dark as is the vault of heaven o'ercast
With deepest shades of night
Your eyes, that sought far lands, obscure to mortal sight.

I felt in you the grief of flickering flame,
Of stifled sighs,
Yearning toward godhead in your voice and eyes.
You were as a singing-girl, from whom there came
A whisper but no song;
Sick were you 'mid the sound, and weak among the strong.

I thought: “How rich are you in love, in passion;
Your soul might warm
All joy, all beauty in its fostering charm.
What will avail your wealth?—In shameful fashion
You'll be despoiled of men,
Crushed like a woodland violet in a robber's den.

“In degradation you may bend, perchance,
A slave or worse,
All for your beauty and your frailty's curse.
For those that sweetliest dream and mildliest glance,
Most brutally they must
Be trampled to the earth and soiled with dust.”

But fortune has been kind to you thus far:
When men rejected;
Peris, it may be, have your ways protected.
For me, I love you as a song, a star
That fades with morning's ray,
Or as a lovely legend of an elder day.