The Story
of Saville
Her bountiful largess of healing under a fostering sun,
Or rooted on some bleak headland, torn by the mistral harsh,
Or midst of the drooping cypresses and beaded moss of a marsh,—
For she spoke not alone with the cold precision and icy glitter of thought,
That of itself no poetry forms, but all of her speech was wrought
With fluctuant gleams of the light divine that never on sea or land
Doth shine, but only in vestal hearts that tremble and understand,
And whether she struck with a touch assured the silver strings of her lyre,
’Till the whole wood rang to a rhapsody as of a seraph choir,
Or whether she wailed in a minor key, sad as the coo of a dove,
Briny with tears as the ocean foam, a bittersweet story of love,
Or whether elegiac, organ-deep, she chanted a dirge-refrain,
Or of rivulets warbled and resinous buds and burgeon of meadow and plain,
Eloquent utterance, gracile as palms, poppies of fire and of dew,
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