Classic Poem

I'll sing of Love an hundred songs;
For there's an endless store.
I'll sing of Love till the listening stars
Shall crowd the ocean floor.
And then I'll sing again of Love
And then of Love once more.

Here is the riddle; here the key:
Uncoil the silken mesh.
For Otus is a human soul
And Rismel is the flesh.
And tho my theme is the age's dream
Its heart is young and fresh.

Otus quaffed white flame of sun
That gilded Gramard's noon.
But Rismel breathed where the cold weed wreathed
Round Triton's heavy shoon.
Rismel dwelt on the lone sea veldt
And wept for the round, red moon.

It is a name that pours like wine:
" Rismel, Rismel, Rismel. "
Whenever the word three times was heard,
An answer — low and dismal —
Moaned under the walls of sobbing halls,
In sea arcades abysmal.

Rismel, now, by the light of moon,
Doth Gramard's glory wear.
And Otus knows where the whitest rose
Distils its fragrance rare.
And Otus goes with the whitest rose
And binds it in her hair.

The sea-gull rests on Gramard's shore
And mends her broken wing.
And waters, dumb, from caverns come
To Gramard's cliffs, and sing.
So ride with me to Gramard's sea,
And all your dead loves bring.

Yea, bring your dead loves in your arms,
And I will kiss their brows.
And they shall walk with thee at morn,
And mend their broken vows.
And the merry breeze shall bid the seas
Laugh over sunken prows.

More graves than one each man shall dig;
(A sexton's trade we ply.)
For every twilight spreads a grave
Where some dead love doth lie —
Some poor and pitiful dead love
That, buried, does not die.

Moving like shuttles over the deep —
Through broken masts and spars —
The dolphins sew the rents of woe
Where storm-gods smote the bars.
And the low, brown tide that floods my song
Unrolls a script of stars.

Otus quaffs white flame of sun
From flask of Gramard's noon.
But Rismel sits where the sunbeam knits
Gold robes for Gramard's dune.
Nor shall she ever slip back to sea
And weep for the round, red moon.

This is a tale of hidden things
Which Love, alone, may find —
A tale that sinks in the sad sea-wave,
And mounts in the soft night wind:
A tale that rides on the star-flecked tides
That under the cliffs grow blind.