Classic Poem

That night the sun went down at last
When evening in a blaze of gold
Sank behind amethystine veils.
Drifting along the bays they passed
With faint airs breathing and manifold
Whispers amid their tranquil sails.
And high above the cliffs, the moon
Her naked silver majesty
Above this hush of glowing June
Unveiled to haunt the sleeping sea.
And they were tranquil,—even they
Who late in such a storm had tossed
Now musingly in dusk of grey
Sailed up the long line of the coast.

Now he had come to know her face
And see the delicate moulding there
Where intricate thoughts had carved their trace
Of fineness more than merely fair—
The scarcely hollowed cheek, the eyes
Of never-resting eagerness,
The wide white brow,—seemed deeply wise
Behind their glow of youthful dress.
Thoroughly wise, that face, and versed
In what world, flesh, and devil meant;
And yet, for all it had rehearsed,
Irrevocably innocent.—
A child's face, almost,—one who played
With dangerous toys for her delight
And tossed sharp daggers unafraid
Yet never stabbed her bosom quite.—
The groves of Sidon seemed to stir
Beyond the shadows of her hair.
An ancient sadness circled her
With light that fallen queens might wear.
Her cool and pallid beauty bore
No likeness to the summer's blooms;
It breathed of myrrh from some far shore,
Of secret winds, of rock-cut tombs.—
A face that from the lighted crowd
Might haunt a lonely passer's thought
And whisper where the streets are loud
Forgotten musics he had sought.

And yet amid the silences
Came doubts of ominous intent.
He felt astray in mysteries,
Unsure what this adventure meant.
Beyond her sweetness, siren-eyed,
Beyond her unrevealing smile,
What strange chimera shapes might hide
Of proved debasement, daring guile,
As of some mere adventuress,
Some Babylonian, shrewd to spice
A fundamental wantonness
With moonlight of mock paradise?

Then as her voice across the dark
Came, slender, modulated, cool,
He knew his fancies for the stark
Perversions of a skeptic fool.
He knew that whatsoever lord
Of flame or chaos ruled in her
Was brother to the flashing sword
Of the high rebel, Lucifer.

There was a tenderness in the night;
She seemed no stranger to his eyes.
He talked unguarded with delight
And caught the throb of her replies.
He followed where her laughter led
Up airy flights of some conceit,
And all the low-toned words she said
Chimed individual and sweet
Within his mind. Of dreams and men,
Cities and songs, that they had loved
They gravely argued, laughed again,
Echoed and answered and approved.
He long had moved in middle air,
Not quite a denizen of earth,
Weaving his wandering music there
Where meteors come to flashing birth;
And now this secret region, dumb
And icy to the general heart,
He saw with wonder, was her home …
Wherein her spirit moved apart
Upon some ever-baffled quest
Of beauty, happiness, or all
That can allure the mortal guest
To leave the mortal festival.
And he, who late had solely known
The call of her enraptured blood,
Now felt her spirit and his own
Freed in a luminous quietude
Wherein even her loveliness
Seemed but the secret minister
Of the live soul intense to press
Out through each line and hue of her.

In the wide silver glow
Over their empty ocean shed
They drifted into silence. Then he said—
“We, strangers, know
Each other strangely well tonight.
But this is a faery-land afar.—
In regions of the common light
I wonder who you really are?”

She smiled a little.—“You I know quite well,
And your high grey monastic house
Looking down on the coast.
And how each summer you dwell
There like a hermit, with forbidding brows
And eyes in dreaming lost!
And that from out the organ's sleeping keys
You summon visions and spells and mysteries.
But I,—the words would tell
You nothing; for of late
I have thrown aside my old self and old name
And the old world that I had come to hate.
No, this is faery-land; you must not claim
To know my earthly fate.”
And he asked nothing further, being content
To dwell a while in her enchanted maze
By delicate sweetness lighted through and through.
He knew not whence she came nor where she went;
And who she was, even in the later days
He never fully knew.

Oh night of wonder! Down the wide
Slow-heaving flood they slowly passed.
She seemed a dream-shape; at her side
He only hoped the dream might last.
Each shadowy headland came to loom
Like a great monster, till the tide
Swept them around it, and the gloom
Turned silver on the farther side.
Hour after hour they slipped along,
Silent or speaking as they willed.
The night seemed gloriously long
And with a dream's long wonders filled.

At last the reddening moon hung low
Over the water; and its glow
Was a wide track of broken light,
A pathway for them down the night—
Till it sank; and on the deep
An impenetrable veil of sleep
Seemed spread above the quiet foam,
Save where, in the gigantic dome
Of dark, the stars' slow pageantry
Wheeled in solemn glory by.

Then for long they never spoke.—
Until, far eastward, broke
A faint light through the dark,
And the swift, stark,
Bewildering dawn began to come
Mysteriously cold across the foam
From the remote horizon. They leaned out
From the little boat
And felt the coolness of the stirring air,
Speculatively marking where
The sun at last would lift
Its rim. They seemed adrift
As in the first dawn seen by the first man,
It was all so vast, so measureless, so new.
She shivered, and drew
A little closer to him; and then his frame began
To tremble also with some inward power
Awakening slowly.
She turned and looked at him; the unearthly hour,
The silence, the lone world, suddenly seized them wholly,—
And with a cry, throwing aside the weight
Of the confused night's obscure history
And all the wisdom of the day now past,
Upon their lips came the salt sting of fate;
And the irresistible flood of bursting light
Swept them with sacred might
Out to the dusky passion-shaken sea
Of each other's arms, each other's breasts at last. . . .

When the sun came
With clear flame,
She, dumb but smiling, turned toward shore;
And where, the day before,
She had found him, steered along the edge
Of the rocky ledge.
He kissed her lips and shoulder, and stepped forth
To the real earth.
Then out unswervingly through the blue heart of the bay
She sailed away.