Classic Poem

Women are bound by deep unbroken ties
Throughout their length of ages on the earth.
A cord not cut and knotted at each birth,
A quickening pulse which death and doom defies.
Love's sweet and secret, fervent mystery
Is never shared by woman with her lover;
Some ancient plaint, out of a book's dim cover,
Speaks more to her of her heart's history.

In the high moments of her life she goes
Companioned by the beautiful, the brave,
Wearing the fate of Helen for a rose,
Yearning with Iseult over the dark wave,
Watching the slow bright-petaled moments fall
Within Francesca's close Italian wall.

Before Penelope's unfinished loom
She sits to wait, so does not wait forsaken.
Or in the path an earthquake war has taken
Mourns with a Trojan queen her ravished tomb.
And when the hour strikes that sees her lie
Borne down to earth by her triumphant pain,
She hears the shepherds whispering again
And sees a new star in the darkened sky.

No woman walks her way of life alone.
A foot has marked the path that she must tread,
Picking her way from sharpened stone to stone,
Or on soft grass the spring has carpeted.
Her laughter on an echoing air is blown,
And when she weeps she shall be comforted.