Classic Poem

With torch high held,
A mounting flame
Lifted above the envious enmity
Of tempest
Or of cloud —
Eros the Wanderer strays.

His rushing wing
By palace guard unstayed
As heart most timorous barred from his approach;
His light step echoing nightingales of Thrace,
His lips with violet Sappho's kisses wet,
Across an unperceiving world
Where no strewn altars wait
Or rhythmic worshippers,
The pagan Wanderer wayward strays.

And whether down June gardens streaked with dawn,
The rosy rumour of his pinions backward blown,
Or dewy orchards at the night's high noon —
Across war's devastating plain
Or narrower passes of despair,
Where'er his golden sandals pause,
A glory as of star-sown space
Appears.

Impalpable Lingerer — 'neath the moon
Beside some cottage lattice
Set ajar,
Where the night moth may find his flaring flower
Aware —
A Loiterer at twilight bars,
While fireflies sign their emulous loves
In fire on the dusk —
Nor eyes that seek nor hands that clasp
But catch diviner trouble
From that Wanderer,
In dreams
By human yearning stirred.

Terror and Joy implacable
He roves,
Unresting yet —
Through life and war and death,
His secret image on the soul
Proclaims him still
The Unknown Eros,
God of all gods desired,
The intolerable,
The Uncontrolled.

Beneath the radiant shadowing of his wings
Swift blindness falls —
The unbeholding sense to ashes burned
In his bright elements,
A mortal spark lit at immortal fires
To blaze its little instant
Deified,
Ere the oncoming dark.