Don Juan in Portugal

At every pelhourinho's ledge

Faces to set my teeth on edge-

Gray gossips, like a dusty hedge,

Whisper and crackle.

T lean at Alcobaca, dim

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-

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.

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;

Her diadem

Of heavy hair, the Moorish low estalegem;

Outside, the stillness and white glare

Of Alcobaca's noonday square;

My hands that dare-

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,

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.

Madre in gloria, be thou just

To that frail glory-

A white rose fallen into dust!