Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/177

" One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life—a gilded vapor—shall exhale,
Brief as a sigh—and cease.

" But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,
Bring many a dark-eyed maid

" From the bright, sea-kissed town;
My beautiful, beloved enemies,
Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze,
Each in her festal gown.

" All those through whom I learned
The sweets of folly and the pains of love,
My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove,
For whom, poor moth, I burned.

" Loves of a day, an hour,
Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year,
Though each be strange to each, to me all dear
As to the bee the flower.

" Around me they shall move
In languid contra dances, and shall shed
Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead,
Bu quick to flash back love.