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Alfred Noyes - Niobe
Work rating: Low

How like the sky she bends above her child, 
   One with the great horizon of her pain! 
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild, 
   No weeping cloud, no momentary rain, 
Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief, 
   That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb. 
      She stoops in pity above the labouring earth, 
            Knowing how fond, how brief 
   Is all its hope, past, present, and to come, 
      She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth. 


Through that fair face the whole dark universe 
   Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro’ one white flower; 
And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse 
   The gods, but cannot die before their hour, 
Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head 
   Bows over all earth’s graves. It was her cry 
      Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways 
            With children’s blood ran red. 
   Her silence towers to Silences on high; 
      And, in her face, the whole earth’s anguish prays. 


It is the pity, the pity of human love 
   That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom, 
And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove 
   Frozen upon its nest, ne’er to resume 
Its happy breathing o’er the golden brace 
   That she must shield till death. Death, death alone 
      Can break the anguished horror of that spell. 
            The sorrow on her face 
   Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone; 
      She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell. 


Ah, yet, her woman’s love, so vast, so tender, 
    Her woman’s body, hurt by every dart, 
Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender 
   Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart. 
She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief 
   Infinite pang of such victorious pain 
      That she transcends the heavens and bows them down! 
            The majesty of grief 
   Is hers, and her dominion must remain 
      Eternal. Grief alone can wear that crown.
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