To Eleonora Duse II

by Sara Teasdale

　　

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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.

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