To touch a window or a crumbling sill.

[14]

[14]

IMMORTALIS

All loved and lovely women, dear to rhyme:

Thaïs, Cassandra, Helen and their fames,

Burn like tall candles through forgotten time,

Lighting the Past's dim arras with their names.

Around their faces wars the eager dark,

Wherein all other lights are sunken now;

Yet, casting back, the seeker still may mark

A flame of hair, a bright, immortal brow.

Surely, where they have passed, one after one,

Wearing their radiance to the darkened room,——

Surely, new-comers to Oblivion

May still descry, in that all-quenching gloom,

Rare faces, lovely, lifted and alight,

Like tapers burning through the windy night.

[15]

[15]

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