Classic Poem

She sits, a Woman like a Titaness:
Her clench't left hand, the elbow on its knee,
SupportSher cheek with concentrative stress;
The unremembered right unconsciously
Still holds the sphere-describing compasses;
And strown about the narrow floor we see
The instruments with which she lately wrought
To carve material symbols of her thought.

But, Oh, the stern, strong, swarthy countenance!
Oh, the intensely fixt sole-thoughted eyes
Gazing athwart the sullen sea's expanse,
Wherein the sun is drowning from the skies!
A Sphynx thus gazes in eternal trance
Athwart the desert's gloomy mysteries,
Thus images a soul beyond the scope
Of all fond frailties of fear and hope.

A bat is floating in the waste of air,
Its uncouth wings outspread to spread the scroll
Whereon—perchance imprinted by the glare
Of those fierce eyes instinct with fiery soul—
One word is legible; one word, yet ne'er
In volume heaped on volume was the whole
Of any nature more completely writ:
This ‘Melencolia’ comprehends all wit.

Lo! she has set herself with fierce intent
Of never-quailing will and desperate pride,
Alike unloving and unreverent,
To clutch the inmost mysteries that hide
In Nature's being and God's government;
And she has found but Fate—God petrified—
And not a single word or sign can wring
From the tremendous, dumb, blind, crushing Thing.

Therefore she sits thus sternly desolate;
Therefore the fruitless thoughts that vex her brain
Have blossomed outwardly to mock her state
With such a fragile wreath adust and vain;
Therefore the hopeless consciousness of Fate
Imprisoning her soul is pictured plain
In the metallic polished rigidness
Of the voluminous indented dress.

Those compasses could measure out no arc
Concentric with the measureless round sweep
Of Heaven and Earth; that globe was ever dark
And could not mirror in its crystal sleep
One vision of the secret powers which mark
(Working mysterious in the central deep)
Time's progress on the world's broad dial-face
With grand unlingering, unhurrying pace.