Page:Eight Harvard Poets.djvu/81

 HELEN

GAIN the voices of the hunting horns And the new moon, low lying on the hills, Tell that the summer night is on its way.— O languid heart, shalt thou much longer watch This pale procession of the silent hours Melt into shadows of unending years? Much longer feed on yearning and despair And all the anguish of departed time? Tomorrow is as yesterday; today No nearer than the morning when there stood In Leda's palace, asking for my hand, Tall Menelaus with his yellow hair; No nearer now than the first time these hands Dared linger in caress upon the curls Of him whose dark eyes laughed their love to mine. 'Tis only as if one short, restless sleep Lay over the wide chasm of the years Beyond which loom lost faith and ruined Troy. The night wind brings, as twenty summers since, The silver-breasted swallows from the Nile To quiet Sparta, nestled in her hills, Locked inland from the voices of the sea; And far across the porticos I hear The ivory shuttle singing in the loom 70