Classic Poem

I lean upon the night and count
The women who, unimplored, return,
Return on the night, and suddenly mount
The long stairs their sandalled feet have worn
Until my waiting nights must seem
Noble with phantoms as an ancestral dream.

One has been reared by blue-deep Italian ponds,
And moving keeps such equipoise
As though she had learned from bronze
Bright breast and slim thigh like a boy's;
She breathes as if it were her task
To make love brave, harlotry being a mask.

And how shall I speak calmly of her.
Whose mind was like a bow pulled taut
And a burning arrow drawn to the ear?
Cruel or kind by whim, she brought
Such passion as queens bring to a slave,
Withholding in secret more than she gave.

The last is one most beautiful
Who glides before me noiseless as a cloud;
She has found upon the moon one pool,
One last unwithered pool, and bowed
To it with slim arms, and lifted up
Sweet poisons in a moon-moth colored cup.

These then I have loved in nakedness
Or wildly in thought, and had most joy
Of the harlot, most pain of the poetess;
But from her whom no word can decoy,
No sorcerous sound, to take up flesh again,
I have had all joy, all passion and all pain.