Page:The poems of Emma Lazarus volume 1.djvu/177

"One perfect day of peace,
Or ere clean flame consume my fleshly veil,
My life—a gilded vapor—shall exhale,
Brief as a sigh—and cease.

"But ere the torch be laid
To my unshrinking limbs by some true hand,
Athwart the orange-fragrant laughing land,
Bring many a dark-eyed maid

"From the bright, sea-kissed town;
My beautiful, beloved enemies,
Gemmed as the dew, voluptuous as the breeze,
Each in her festal gown.

"All those through whom I learned
The sweets of folly and the pains of love,
My Rose, my Star, my Comforter, my Dove,
For whom, poor moth, I burned.

"Loves of a day, an hour,
Or passions (vowed eternal) of a year,
Though each be strange to each, to me all dear
As to the bee the flower.

"Around me they shall move
In languid contra dances, and shall shed
Their smiling eyebeams as I were not dead,
But quick to flash back love.