The Parsi Woman

Beautiful Parsi woman in your pale silk veil
With the gold border, why do you watch the sky?
The sky is thick and cloudy with the bold strong wings
Of the vulture, that shall tear your breast and thigh,
On the tall Tower of Silence where you at length must lie.

Ah, but have not I,
I too at the end of the northern May
When the pasture slope was pink with the wild azalea
And fragrant with its breath,
Touched the brown treacherous earth with my living hand?—
Thrown me prone on my own green coffin-lid,
And smiled at the grass and had no thought of death?

You there with the tranquil lovely brow,
What do you see so high,—some beautiful thing?
The sun on the vulture’s wing?