Panama and Other Poems Narrative and Occasional :: :: University of Virginia Library

O myriad mooded child of France,
That still canst half the earth entrance!
Now panther stealing on its prey,
Now waking lark in breaking day;
Now tigress crouching in her lair,
Then dove afloat on summer-air.
Enchantress of the voice of gold,
That does the raptured playhouse hold.
Now hoarse in fury pour the words;
Anon the language of the birds.
Now sea of tempest in the trees,
Then murmuring of noontide bees.
I see thee wasting hollow-eyed,
The bright Hippolitus beside.
I see thee down the stairway creep
With fumbling hands and sleepless sleep.
I see thee mid camelias fade,
Mortal renunciation made.

I see thee as La Tosca dart
The hidden knife into the heart.
Millions of shadows on thee tend,
Fierce shapes arise in thee and rend.
Thou room re-echoing with cries,
And with the wail that never dies,
And immortality of sighs.
Temple which classic phantoms tread,
Thou resurrection of the dead.
Here we salute thee from a shore,
From France divided now no more.
No longer sundered by the brine,
But lightly, strongly bound to thine.

October 23d, 1912.