Explore "A Moorish Maid" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Above her veil a shrouded Moorish maid / Showed melting eyes, as limpid as a lake; / A brow untouched by care; a band of jetty hair, / And nothing more. The all-concealing haik / Fell to her high arched instep. At her side / An old duenna walked; her withered face / Half covered only, since no lingering grace / Bespoke the beauty once her master's pride.
Above her veil, the Moorish maid beheld / The modern world, in Paris-decked Algiers; / Saw happy lad and lass, in love's contentment pass, / Or in sweet wholesome friendship, free from fears. / She saw fair matrons, walking arm-in-arm / With life-long lovers, time-endeared, and then / She saw the ardent look in eyes of men, / And thrilled and trembled with a vague alarm.
Above her veil she saw the stuccoed court / That led to dim secluded rooms within. / She followed, dutiful, the dame unbeautiful, / Who told her that the Christian world means sin. / Some day, full soon, she would go forth a bride- / Of one whose face she never had beheld. / Something within her, wakened, and rebelled; / She flung aside her veil, and cried, and cried.