Classic Poem

Oh, not in words--for what are words to seeing;
Yet not in sight, for presence veils and hides;
Not even in sleep, though then the gates of being
Stand open to the large eternal tides;
Neither in memory, embers fading ashen;
Nor by the code, wherein the voice is dumb;
Nor wild still love, fluttered by veils of passion,
Rise summit by summit to Janiculum!

Think not to speak and tell the riddling purport;
Think not that sight of beauty caught the best;
Nor any dream furls its dim sails in her port;
Nor any memory makes her manifest;
Nor by a measure of days mete out her measure,
Nor through remembered poignance pluck her strings.
For she, like moonlight on some hidden treasure,
Steals glimmering down and renders vain these things.

Then I cried, "Love!"--but stars not even shrinking
Glittered the same and night remained the same.
Slowly I swam on dark tides of my thinking,
Yet like no moon she rose to hear her name.
I lay like sand unrimmed of sea and crisping
Under dead sunlight, parched as bleaching bone,
Till all seas shrank and dried, and the last lisping
Of beaded water vanished from the stone.


Then jagged lightning forked, the thunder shattered
Like stunning guns. Amain the trees were blown
And shrieked and writhed and whirled their branches tattered
Like patriarchs waking to some end long-known,--
All my heart's storm--assault and wild repulsion--
And hissing sand-coils swaying high and dim--
Flash blinding-bright! And through that last revulsion
I saw her passing on the desert's rim.