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10
SONNETS TO DUSE
To Eleonora Duse
Your beauty lives in mystic melodies,
And all the light about you breathes a song.
Your voice awakes the dreaming airs that throng
Within our music-haunted memories:
The sirens' strain that sank within the seas
When men forgot to listen, floats along
Your voice's undercurrent soft and strong.
Sicilian shepherds pipe beneath the trees;
Along the purple hills of drifted sand,
A lone Egyptian plays an ancient flute;
At dawn the Memnon gives his old salute
Beside the Nile, by desert breezes fanned.
The music faints about you as you stand,
And with the Orphean lay it trembles mute.
