Read "The Sibyl" by Thomas Gordon Hake online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I: A maid who mindful of her playful time / Steps to her summer, bearing childhood on / To woman's beauty, heedless of her prime: / The early day but not the pastime gone: / She is the Sibyl, uttering a doom / Out of her spotless bloom.
II: She is the Sibyl; seek not, then, her voice; - / A laugh, a song, a sorrow, but thy share, / With woes at hand for many who rejoice / That she shall utter; that shall many hear; / That warn all hearts who seek of her their fates, / Her love but one awaits.
III: She is the Sibyl; days that distant lie / Bend to the promise that her word shall give; / Already hath she eyes that prophesy, / For of her beauty shall all beauty live: / Unknown to her, in her slow opening bloom, / She turns the leaves of doom.