Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BUCOLIC COMEDY: KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID, by EDITH SITWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BUCOLIC COMEDY: KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: The five-pointed crude pink tinsel star
Last Line: "that shall drop down their dew on her sleeping eyes."
Subject(s): Burne-jones, Edward Coley (1833-1898); Cophetua, King (legend); Paintings And Painters


THE five-pointed crude pink tinsel star
Laughed loudly at King Cophetua;

Across the plain that is black as mind
And limitless, it laughed unkind

To see him whitened like a clown
With the moon's flour, come in a golden crown.

The moon shone softer than a peach
Upon the round leaves in its reach;

The dark air sparkled like a sea --
The beggar-maid leaned out through a tree

And sighed (that pink flower-spike full of honey),
"Oh, for Love ragged as Time, with no money!"

Then through the black night the gardener's boy
As sunburnt as hay, came whispering, "Troy

Long ago was as sweet as the honey-chimes
In the flower-bells jangling into rhymes,

And, oh, my heart's sweet as a honey-hive
Because of a wandering maid, and I live

But to tend the pale flower-bells of the skies
That shall drop down their dew on her sleeping eyes."





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