Two Backgrounds by Edith Wharton — Read

I. LA VIERGE AU DONATEUR.

HERE by the ample river's argent sweep, / Bosomed in tilth and vintage to her walls, / A tower-crowned Cybele in armored sleep / The city lies, fat plenty in her halls, / With calm, parochial spires that hold in fee / The friendly gables clustered at their base, / And, equipoised o'er tower and market-place, / The Gothic minster's winged immensity;

And in that narrow burgh, with equal mood, / Two placid hearts, to all life's good resigned, / Might, from the altar to the lych-gate, find / Long years of peace and dreamless plenitude.

II. MONA LISA.

Yon strange blue city crowns a scarped steep / No mortal foot hath bloodlessly essayed; / Dreams and illusions beacon from its keep, / But at the gate an Angel bares his blade;

And tales are told of those who thought to gain / At dawn its ramparts; but when evening fell / Far off they saw each fading pinnacle / Lit with wild lightnings from the heaven of pain;

Yet there two souls, whom life's perversities / Had mocked with want in plenty, tears in mirth, / Might meet in dreams, ungarmented of earth, / And drain Joy's awful chalice to the lees.