Classic Poem

He sleeps, and I am weary now of song,
And weary of the pallid flowers I sought
Beneath the swaying depths of moon-stirred tides;
And I am weary of all other things
Except the silent face beneath mine eyes,
The hands I touch, the body warm with sleep.
As through a heavy mist on groping wings
A white bird flutters, and is lost again,
There hovered on his lips a distant name
That shook his breath, — and vanished in his dreams. ...
Oceanus, my father, by the love
That brought my mother Thetis to your arms,
I pray you build a wall of waves and wind,
So from this isle no barque may ever sail!
Disturb the depths and hurl the waters high
And with a tempest lash the tortured sea
Until it writhes and leaps, and lines of foam
Are left against the sky like drifting clouds!
And Thetis, O my mother, — bear to Zeus
The prayer that beats against my frightened heart
That He may hush the call of Ithaca
That draws Odysseus o'er the wine-dark sea
And in his dreams for ever leads him home.
Ah, blithe and lovely Thetis, whose white feet
Speed o'er the waves as flowers blown through foam, —
Are you the mother from whose breast I lived,
The laughing, kissing mother whom I loved
Before you gave me to this wooded isle?
You bore a son, Achilles, to a king,
And me you bore, a daughter to a god,
And love has fallen on you as the sun
Falls burningly upon a waving flower;
Your beauty does not wither to the wind,
But toward the sun you lift your face and smile.
Did ever light and heat descend on you
As love has fallen heavily on me?
Oh, lift my heart within your shining arms
And put to sleep the longing and the dread,
And put to sleep the waking hours of tears!