HER SWIFTNESS

You are too swift for poetry, too fleet

For any mused numbers to ensnare:

Swifter than music dying on the air

Or bloom upon rose-petals, fades the sweet

Vanishing magic of your flying feet,

Your poised finger, and your shining hair:

Words cannot tell how wonderful you were,

Or how one gesture made a joy complete.

And since you know my pen may never capture

The transient swift loveliness of you,

Come, let us salve our sense of the world's loss

Remembering, with a melancholy rapture,

How many dancing-girls... and poets too...

Dream in the dust of Hecatompylos.