Skip to content
Linespedia

An Incident

Topics: classic

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:     There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;     Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;     A child of sin anathemaed of preachers.     She had been lovely once; but dye and scarlet,     On hair and face, had ravaged all her beauty;     Only her eyes still did her girl-soul duty,     Showing the hell that hounded her poor harlot!     One day a fisherman from out the river     Fished her pale body, (like a branch of willlow,     Or golden weed) self-murdered, drowned and broken:     The sight of it had made a strong man shiver;     And on her poor breast, as upon a pillow,     A picture smiled, a baby's, like some token

AI analysis available. Enable JavaScript to interact.

About this line

"Here is a tale for men and women teachers:..."

Madison Julius Cawein's contribution to classic is further solidified by the brilliance found in "An Incident"... ### Why We Love This Line At Linespedia, we believe that poetry is the ultimate sanctuary for the soul...

Classified Tags

Related lines

"I saw the daughters of the ocean dance     With wind and tide, and heard them on the rocks:     White hands they waved me, tossing sunlit locks,"

"Listen, dearest! you must love me more,     More than you did before!     Hark, what a beating here of wings!     Never at rest,     Dear, in"

"I.     O Dark-Eyed goddess of the marble brow,     Whose look is silence and whose touch is night,     Who walkest lonely through the world, O tho"

"God made that night of pearl and ivory,     Perfect and holy as a holy thought     Born of perfection, dreams, and ecstasy,     In love and sil"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"

Continue Reading

"I saw the daughters of the ocean dance     With wi..."

Weekly Poetic Insight

Join our literary Sanctuary

Get the most inspiring lines, poetic analysis, and secret shayaris delivered to your inbox every Sunday.