Richard Burton

THE ARCHING skies, the ancient wind

Soughing through immemorial trees;

The sense of all that lurks behind

The year’s now tattered masonries,

Where the blithe birds once built their home

High in the air-sweet, leafy dome.

Then, the lone figure of a girl

Clear-limned against the buttressed hills;

Slim, beautiful, a tiny pearl

Set round with ruby light that fills

The all-illumined spaces where

No dark may creep nor shadow dare.

Not for an earldom would I break

The silence of yon dreaming maid;

I could not play her soul awake

With Love’s most magic serenade;

Her thought holds secrets hid from me,

Deeper than mortal minstrelsy.