Classic Poem

Men who never play leap-frog
With fancies and ideas
Say that only minor poets
Break the trouble of their minds and hearts,
Lightly, boldly, into images
Discovered on a woman's face.
Hi-i, teedle-ti-tum!
Pearl-fishing is a scamp-like sport,
But small insinuations
In the whiteness of its gleam
Have been known to bring anxiety
To philosophers and psychologists.
Twenty thousand years contain
An old, heart-breaking habit!
They refuse to respect
The clamors and parades
Of a word known as importance.

II

Emotion, with that stillness
Which evades simplicity
And subtlety, attains upon her face
The outward stare of religion.
The expected touch of her lover
Becomes an unbelievable
Flight from all the hagglings
And cataclysms of life.
Philosophers can never quite explain
This madly fixed, entranced phenomenon!