C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Archibald Lampman (1861–1899)

WHAT days await this woman, whose strange feet

Breathe spells; whose presence makes men dream like wine;

Tall, free, and slender as the forest pine;

Whose form is molded music; through whose sweet

Frank eyes I feel the very heart’s least beat,

Keen, passionate, and full of dreams and fire:

How in the end, and to what man’s desire,

Shall all this yield—whose lips shall these lips meet?

One thing I know: if he be great and pure,

This love, this fire, this beauty, shall endure;

Triumph and hope shall lead him by the palm:

But if not this, some differing thing he be,

That dream shall break in terror; he shall see

The whirlwind ripen, where he sowed the calm.