HELEN
AGAIN 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
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