LOVE-GIVERS
I.
You are remembered, women once loved well:
O brown-eyed girl of Florence,
You looked when Dante Alighieri passed. . . .
He paid for this with a life's adoration,
Crowning you over the daughters of heaven.
You are remembered, women once loved well:
O brown-eyed girl of Florence,
You looked when Dante Alighieri passed. . . .
He paid for this with a life's adoration,
Crowning you over the daughters of heaven.
There was Helen, who fled from her Spartan husband,
Sick of the endless clatter of wars;
Fled with a dazzled youth, over the tousled sea,—
As the oar-blades flashed to the moon, and sliced the waters,
—And gave her body to him. . . .
He rendered the last bruised drop of his blood,
And a towered city burned and ended.
Sick of the endless clatter of wars;
Fled with a dazzled youth, over the tousled sea,—
As the oar-blades flashed to the moon, and sliced the waters,
—And gave her body to him. . . .
He rendered the last bruised drop of his blood,
And a towered city burned and ended.
And that warm dusky queer of the Nile
Lent of her practiced body to a Roman,
Who paid the world for her. . . .
Women who were loved, you are well remembered.
Lent of her practiced body to a Roman,
Who paid the world for her. . . .
Women who were loved, you are well remembered.
II.
And what of you, in your slim shining beauty,
Dawn-lipped, eyed like the gray-blue sky of March,
And what of you, in your slim shining beauty,
Dawn-lipped, eyed like the gray-blue sky of March,
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