| |
| AT every pelhourinho’s ledge | |
| Faces to set my teeth on edge— | |
| Gray gossips, like a dusty hedge, | |
| Whisper and crackle. | |
| |
| I lean at Alcobaca, dim | 5 |
| With fig-leaves twisted round its rim. | |
| Pauses a slim | |
| Tall maid. Her name?—A Latin hymn, | |
| |
| Gloria da Madre de Deus; | |
| A white-rose face dipped tremulous— | 10 |
| A profile carved as nobly clear | |
| As love-child of Aurelius. | |
| |
| White-clad, barefoot and straight she stood, | |
| Vase-bearing nymph ripe to be wooed | |
| In some delicious interlude. . . . . . . . . . . | 15 |
| What need now to remember more?— | |
| The tiled and twisted fountain’s pour, | |
| The vase forgotten on the floor, | |
| The white street ending in her door; | |
| |
| Her head, a dark flower on a stem; | 20 |
| Her diadem | |
| Of heavy hair, the Moorish low estalegem; | |
| Outside, the stillness and white glare | |
| Of Alcobaca’s noonday square; | |
| My hands that dare— | 25 |
| The beauty of her loosened hair: | |
| |
| White shift, white door, the white still street; | |
| Her lips, her arms, her throat, her feet; | |
| After a while—the bread and meat, | |
| |
| A dewy jar of cool red wine, | 30 |
| Olives that glisten wet with brine. | |
| White rose of Alcobaca—mine— | |
| We kiss again above the wine! . . . . . . . . . . | |
| The red wine drunk, the broken crust, | |
| We parted as all lovers must. | 35 |
| Madre in gloria, be thou just | |
| To that frail glory— | |
| A white rose fallen into dust! | |
| |
