Classic and Contemporary Poetry
TWO WOMEN: AT BETROTHAL, by E. DORSET First Line: We had found ease for all our souls' alarms Last Line: For all her twenty years. Subject(s): Courtship | ||||||||
We had found ease for all our souls' alarms, And bade our hope combine; And as I stood there, still as at some shrine, She softly came into my waiting arms In token she was mine. I kissed, in silence, lip and cheek, closed eyes, The fragrant forehead rare; Then, softlier still, she drooped the young head there And drew my face, ere I could find surprise, Against her coiled-up hair. I long had worshipped this, how unconfessed, Thinking in each day-dream, How its dark waves might, sometime loosened, stream Beneath my soothing stroke, once full-possessed; And passing what could seem, For one mazed moment I had well forgot, As into my close fold She had surrendered; then I felt the cold And silken helix of its towering knot, Brushed bright and firmly rolled; A giant cable, thicker than the wrist That bade it not to fall, Wound round and round until it covered all The sweet head's crown with each bewildering twist That made delight its thrall. Through it I breathed, all seasoned scents and clear, Long drafts of blent perfume That I had sensed but vaguely in the room When first I entered there and I drew near Within the late day's gloom: The cool northeastern mist, the August shower, The smell of wheat when forth the clean scythe goes, The fallen leaves in the wood, the summer's rose, The delicate and pale arbutus-flower Within the springtime snows. Being by nature more than taciturn, I did not speak of it, Thrilled by the sense of strange and exquisite Meanings I might not yet in full discern; But she articulate, Her own shy silence broken, told me how Her mother, dead, through long yet prideful fears, Had kept it well; it had not known the shears, Coming untouched, unsullied with her now For all her twenty years. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AS YOU WALK OUT ONE MORNING by GLYN MAXWELL TALE OF THE MAYOR'S SON by GLYN MAXWELL THE RIVALS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON MARJORIE'S WOOING by EMMA LAZARUS THE FORTUNATE SPILL by MARILYN NELSON REQUEST TO LEDA by DYLAN THOMAS |
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