Classic Poem

Well, he was drunk. That much was clear,
Or not quite clear but certain.
Queer
The way a rising moon will burn
Green copper!
Thing you'll never learn
From books: but out of life and beer
Or beer and life you may discern
Great truths—as that a tower gleams
In moon-fire like a torch and seems
A toppling brand of burnt emprise.
No teacher else is half so wise
At demonstrating chords and themes
The singing sort of men devise.

Take Helen,—all you hear of her
In lectures is a learned slur
Of couplets solemnly undressed
To indicate the female chest,
Till Helen's lost and nothing's sure
But that she had, praise God, a breast.

And then you're drunk and out you walk
Through High Street where the shadows mock
The third dimension of thick day,
And walls chirp back the words you say;
And magically above your talk,
As lift faint mountains far away,
There lifts a sudden loveliness,
A flare of beauty, an excess
Of radiance, more sense than thought,
Like soundless music somehow caught
Back of the brain, or some impress
Of figures in a dream forgot—
And there stands Helen—there's the face
Young Marlowe saw past time and space
And would have seen again and died;
There, there the subtle breast, the side
White as white water, there the grace
Of queens and there the pride, the pride.

Helen, he said,—but was it she?
Somewhere he'd seen serenity
Drawn smooth as this across a flame
As bright to hide, and brows that tame
Eyes as unapt to secrecy,—
Nay, he had known these eyes, this same
Young breast, this throat. There was a name …