INCARNATION
INCESSANTLY the long rain falls,
Slanting on black walls,
Which glisten gold where a street lamp shines.
In a shop-window, spangled in long lines,
By rain-drops all a-glow,
An Italian woman's face
Flames into my soul as I go
Hastily by in the turbulent darkness;—
An oval olive face,
With the sweetly sullen grace
Of the Virgin when first she sees,
Amid her garden's silver lilies,
The white-robed angel gleam,
And softly, as by a sultry dream,
Feels all her soul subdued unto the fire
And radiance of her ecstasy.
So in some picture, on which as on a lyre,
An old Italian painter laboriously has played
His soul away, his love, all his desire
For fragrant things afar from earth,
Shines the Madonna, as with a veil overlaid
By incense-smoke and dust age-old,
At whose feet, in time of dearth
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