The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar/To Her

TO HER

Your presence like a benison to me Wakes my sick soul to dreamful ecstasy, I fancy that some old Arabian night Saw you my houri and my heart's delight.

And wandering forth beneath the passionate moon, Your love-strung zither and my soul in tune, We knew the joy, the haunting of the pain That like a flame thrills through me now again.

To-night we sit where sweet the spice winds blow, A wind the northland lacks and ne'er shall know, With clasped hands and spirits all aglow As in Arabia in the long ago.