As from heaven alighting, she early Stepped sleep-anointed from bed; Yet, if her brow stooped, you dreamed she Gazed through the ground at the dead. Aflash as are dewy pansies Were the eyes that she raised to meet men's Till their blackness bloomed benignly With smiles of a gay innocence. When, slim and straight as a fir-tree, She carried that teeming head, On the dignity of her bearing Da Vinci's eyes might have fed. She had soothed while her years were tender The woe that can not be shared, And knew that the wrong had happened Which never can be repaired, And, though sigh escaped if she brooded, Her alacrity captured the light That streams from ineffable sources And tempers with stars midnight. She planned and she wrought and though she Had given her utmost, behold! A brimmed heart every morning To lavish on young and old, Till cavelike it flooded with slumber As the pillow beneath her head gave. Thus her days by their refluent bounty Became as the heave of a wave, A wave that washes for ever A world that will never be clean: And, that fragrance from ardency fade not, Where the throng was, she passed unseen. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...OLD TRAILS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON A LOVER'S QUARREL by ROBERT BROWNING PARTING AT MORNING by ROBERT BROWNING THE PRETTY GIRL OF LOCH DAN by SAMUEL FERGUSON TO THE THAWING WIND by ROBERT FROST THE VOICE by WILFRID WILSON GIBSON |