Classic Poem

The rhythm of beauty beat in my blood all day;
The rhythm of passion beat in my blood all night;
The morning came, and it seemed the end of the world.

Day, thou wast so beautiful I held my breath from song!
Night, how passion-wild thy throb, how voiceless, oh, how strong!
The night was not more lonely than the day; —
But death-deep was the glimmer of the snow-dawn far away.

I remember the throb of beauty that caught my throat from song,
And the wilder throb when passion held me voiceless the night long;
And life with speed gone silent swept to its seas untold; —
But oh, the death-white glory on the pale height far and cold!

When passion gives beauty yet one day more the rapture of my breath,
Ever a luminous silence comes dawn, and the chill more cold than death;
But rhythm to rhythm, deep unto deep, through the years my spirit is hurled,
As when that morning on Etna came, and it seemed the end of the world.

This is it to be immortal, O Life found death after death,
From the deep of passion and beauty to draw the infinite breath,
To be borne through the throb and the throe and the sinking heart of strife,
And to find in the trough one more billow of thy infinite rhythm, O Life!