Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SHE, by THOMAS STURGE MOORE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SHE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: As from heaven alighting, she early
Last Line: Where the throng was, she passed unseen.
Alternate Author Name(s): Moore, T. Sturge


As from heaven alighting, she early
Stepped sleep-anointed from bed;
Yet, if her brow stooped, you dreamed she
Gazed through the ground at the dead.

Aflash as are dewy pansies
Were the eyes that she raised to meet men's
Till their blackness bloomed benignly
With smiles of a gay innocence.

When, slim and straight as a fir-tree,
She carried that teeming head,
On the dignity of her bearing
Da Vinci's eyes might have fed.

She had soothed while her years were tender
The woe that can not be shared,
And knew that the wrong had happened
Which never can be repaired,

And, though sigh escaped if she brooded,
Her alacrity captured the light
That streams from ineffable sources
And tempers with stars midnight.

She planned and she wrought and though she
Had given her utmost, behold!
A brimmed heart every morning
To lavish on young and old,

Till cavelike it flooded with slumber
As the pillow beneath her head gave.
Thus her days by their refluent bounty
Became as the heave of a wave,

A wave that washes for ever
A world that will never be clean:
And, that fragrance from ardency fade not,
Where the throng was, she passed unseen.





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