Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/434

VARIOUS POEMS A hundred lustres flashed and shone as she rustled through the crowd,

And a passion seized me for her there,—so passionless and proud.

The second time that I saw her she met me face to face;

Her bending beauty answered my bow in a tremulous moment's space;

With an upward glance that instantly fell she read me through and through,

And found in me something worth her while to idle with and subdue;

Something, I know not what: perhaps the spirit of eager youth,

That named her a queen of queens at once, and loved her in very truth;

That threw its pearl of pearls at her feet, and offered her, in a breath,

The costliest gift a man can give from his cradle to his death.

The third time that I saw her—this woman called Estelle—

She passed her milk-white arm through mine and dazzled me with her spell;

A blissful fever thrilled my veins, and there, in the moonbeams white,

I yielded my soul to the fierce control of that maddening delight!

And at many a trysting afterwards she wove my heartstrings round

Her delicate fingers, twisting them, and chanting low as she wound;

The rune she sang rang sweet and clear like the chime of a witch's bell;

Its echo haunts me even now, with the word, Estelle! Estelle!

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