THE
GIRL IN THE POSTER
For
A Design By Ethel Reed
|
|
WITH
her head in the golden lilies,
She reads and is never done.
Why her girlish face so still is,
I know not under the sun.
She is the soul of a woman,
|
5 |
Knowing
whatever befalls;
And I a lonely human,
Dwelling within her walls.
She is the fair immortal
Daughter of truth and art;
|
10 |
And
I, at her lowly portal,
May fare and be glad and depart.
In a region forever vernal,
She keeps her lilied state,—
My beautiful calm eternal
|
15 |
| Mysteriarch
of fate.
In a volume great and golden,
Would better beseem a sage,
Her downcast look is holden;
But I cannot see the page.
|
20 |
Picture, or printed column,
Or records, or cipherings,—
From the drooping lids so solemn
I guess at marvellous things.
Is it a rune she ponders,—
|
|
Word
from an outer clime,
Where the spirit quests and wanders
Through long sidereal time?
Would she trammel her heart, or cumber
Her mind with our mortal needs?
|
|
Do the
shadows quake and slumber
On the book wherein she reads?
I know not. I know her being
Is impulse and mood to mine,
Till I voyage, without foreseeing
|
|
| For
a lost horizon line.
For her the spacious morrow;
But the humble day for me,
In the little house of sorrow
By the unbefriending sea.
|
|
Her hair is a raven glory;
Her chin is pointed and small;
What is the wonderful story
Keeps her forever in thrall?
Her mouth is little and childly;
|
|
Her
brow is innocent broad;
Meekly she reads and mildly,—
Would neither condemn nor applaud.
Would that I too, a-reading,
Might half of her wisdom find,
|
|
In the
gold flowers there unheeding,—
The calm of an open mind!
Day long, as I keep the homely
Round of my chambers here,
Her beauty is modest and comely,
|
|
| Her
presence living and near.
Till it seems I must recover
A day in the ilex grove,
Where I was a destined lover,
And she was destined for love.
|
|
I remember the woods we strayed in,
And the mountain paths we trod,
When she was a Doric maiden,
And I was a young Greek god.
And I have the haunting fancy,
|
|
The
moment my back is turned,
By some Eastern necromancy
Only the artists have learned,
Two great grave eyes are lifted
To follow me round the room,
|
|
And
a sudden breath has shifted
A leaf in the Book of Doom. |
|
|
