Classic Poem

The city is all blinding glare
Insufferable, and fiery air
Quivers from roof and street.
The dusty trees are crimped and dry.
Under her window, passing by,
Camille hears weary feet.

So hot the hour that one might swoon,
Tho hidden from the glaring noon
And latticed from the light.
Through the green jalousies there plays
A twilight from the outer blaze.
Camille is clad in white.

Her silken chamber, garnet-hued
And dim, is one for lassitude,
Where harsh sound cannot reach.
There floats about the dusky room,
From silvern wicker, the perfume
Of muscatel and peach.

From scarlet-crowned geranium beds
On a bright lawn, warm odor sheds
That steals to her repose,
Weighting the weary sense of heat,
Where, massed about a window-seat,
Are heliotrope and rose.

The figures outside passing throw
Shadows that on the ceiling flow
Like ripples on a stream.
One fly swims in the stagnant air.
Camille has loosed her sheaf of hair—
She moves as in a dream.

Her affluent hair is blond as wheat
June-sunned to harvest, warmly sweet,
And heavy as spun gold.
Such hair has Ceres going through
The corn leaves ere the evening dew
Upon the grass is cold.

A jeweled clock has softly stirred
The silence like a dreaming bird
And gone to sleep again.
Camille lies on her dainty bed
With one arm circled overhead,
The other lengthwise lain.

Still flows the ripples on the wall.
Lightly a wilted rose lets fall
Its leaves, as if a hand
Had touched it. Silence is intense,
For opiate perfume's opulence
Has drowsed the blue-skied land.

She slumbers now, with breaths as light
As zephyrs in a starry night
That faintly fall and rise.
She sleeps; her moist lips bud and part—
A cactus blossom, at whose heart
A globe of honey lies.