Love, Weeping, Laid This Song

Lo! an old song, yellow with centuries!
She, she who with her young dust kept it sweet;
She, in some green court on a carvëd seat,
Read it at dusk fair-paged upon her knees;
And, looking up, saw there, beyond the trees,
Tall Helen through the darkling shadows fleet;
And heard, out in the fading river-street,
The roar of battle like the roar of seas.
Love, weeping, laid this song when she was dead
In that sealed chamber, strange with nard and musk.
Outliving Egypt, see it here at last.
We touch its leaves: back rush the seasons sped;
For us, as once for her, in that old dusk,
Troy trembles like a reed before the blast!