Page:Eight Harvard Poets.djvu/43

 INCARNATION

NCESSANTLY the long rain falls, Slanting on black walls, Which glisten gold where a street lamp shines.

In a shop-window, spangled in long lines, By rain-drops all a-glow, An Italian woman's face Flames into my soul as I go Hastily by in the turbulent darkness;— An oval olive face, With the sweetly sullen grace Of the Virgin when first she sees, Amid her garden's silver lilies, The white-robed angel gleam, And softly, as by a sultry dream, Feels all her soul subdued unto the fire And radiance of her ecstasy. So in some picture, on which as on a lyre, An old Italian painter laboriously has played His soul away, his love, all his desire For fragrant things afar from earth, Shines the Madonna, as with a veil overlaid By incense-smoke and dust age-old, At whose feet, in time of dearth 32