She stood among the longest ferns
The valley held; and in her hand
One blossom like the light that burns,
Vermilion, o’er a sunset land;
And round her hair a twisted band
Of pink-pierced mountain-laurel blooms:
And darker than dark pools, that stand
Below the star-communing glooms,
Her eyes beneath her hair’s perfumes.
I saw the moon-pearl sandals on
Her flower-white feet, that seemed too chaste
To tread pure gold: and, like the dawn
On splendid peaks that lord a waste
Of solitude lost gods have graced,
Her face: she stood there, faultless-hipped,
Bound with the cestused silver,—chased
With acorn-cup and crown, and tipped
With oak-leaves,—whence her chiton slipped.
Limbs that the gods call loveliness!—
The grace and glory of all Greece
Wrought in one marble form were less
Than her perfection!—’Mid the trees
I saw her; and time seemed to cease
For me—And, lo! I lived my old
Greek life again of classic ease,
Barbarian as the myths that rolled
Me back into the Age of Gold.
WRECKAGE
I
Love and the drift of many dreams,
Under the moon of a Florida night,
Over the beach with its silvery seams
White as a sail is white.
Love that entered into two lives
Out of the dreams that the nights have borne,
Over the waves where the vapor drives,
Mists that the stars have torn.
Love that welded two hearts and hands
There by the sea, ’neath the shell-white moon,
Like to the stars and the mists and the sands
Setting two lives in tune.
Nights of love that one still keeps
Sacred;—nights, that the faith of one
Heartened there in the treacherous deeps,
Under a tropic sun.