A Reply To William Ernest Henley
I kissed a maiden under skies,
Her lips were rosy and fair.
The sheen of the stars on her eyes,
The gleam of the stars on her hair.
When passion to age soon replies,
In love and memory’s affair.
Music to her soul-telling eyes,
A symphony that moves with her hair.
O! She walked on the shore that night,
And whispered to the clash of the tide.
She asked for the poet to write,
And listening, the poet replied.
Dear Maiden, thy verses to beauty relies,
And softly he writes of her there -
The splash of the sea in her eyes,
The breeze of the sea in her hair.
In fairy tales of laughter and glee,
The Maiden had wrought her heart true,
Like the pacifying voice of the sea
When nightfall had bid it adieu.
The Poet, never the unwise,
Wrote of the Maiden so fair.
The passion of Earth in her eyes,
The charm of the Earth in her hair.
The Maiden, in tears, deftly returned,
A reply to the Poet’s kind ear.
The fire in his heart ever burned,
Only to be dampened by a tear.
He inquired why the Maiden denies,
What the Poet with love can declare,
The resurrection of Spring in her eyes.
The bustle of the Spring in her hair.
She came to him rosy and red,
And begged of his pen a refrain,
Amused at what the Maiden had said,
He asked that tonight she’d remain.
And begged to the sea which denies,
So precious a creature and rare.
The better life that thrives in her eyes.
The sweeter life that waves with her hair.
And O! But a moment if she stayed,
And peered at the scene of her youth.
This rhyme of her beauty might’ve swayed,
That Maiden to trust in this truth.
And she on the shore did rise!
The heavens all-watching did stare!
The freedom of youth in her eyes,
The innocence of youth in her hair.
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