Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/177

Rh &quot; One perfect day of peace, Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil, My life—a gilded vapor—shall exhale, Brief as a sigh—and cease. &quot; But ere the torch be laid To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand, Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land, Bring many a dark-eyed maid &quot; From the bright, sea-kissed town; My beautiful, beloved enemies, Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze, Each in her festal gown. &quot; All those through whom I learned The sweets of folly and the pains of love, My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove, For whom, poor moth, I burned. &quot; Loves of a day, an hour, Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year, Though each be strange to each, to me all dear As to the bee the flower. &quot; Around me they shall move In languid contra dances, and shall shed Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead, Bu quick to flash back love.