HER PICTURE.
Joaquin Miller
see her now the fairest thing - That ever mocked man's picturing,
- I picture her as one who drew
- Aside life's curtain and looked through
- The mists of all life's mystery
- As from a wood to open sea.
- I picture her as one who knew
- How rare is truth to be untrue
- As one who knew the awful sign
- Of death, of life, of the divine
- Sweet pity of all loves, all hates,
- Beneath the iron-footed fates.
- I picture her as seeking peace,
- And olive leaves and vine-set land;
- While strife stood by on either hand,
- And wrung her tears like rosaries.
- I picture her in passing rhyme
- As of, yet not a part of, these
- A woman born above her time.
- The soft, wide eyes of wonderment
- That trusting looked you through and through;
- The sweet, arched mouth, a bow new bent,
- That sent love's arrow swift and true.
- That sweet, arched mouth! The Orient
- Hath not such pearls in all her stores,
- Nor all her storied, spice-set shores
- Have fragrance such as it hath spent.