Classic Poem

From the bosom of ocean I seek thee,
Thou lamp of my spirit afar,
As the seaman, adrift in the darkness,
Looks up for the beam of his star;
And when on the moon-lighted water
The spirits of solitude sleep,
My soul, in the light of thy beauty,
Lies hushed as the waves of the deep.

As the shafts of the sunrise are broken
Far over the glittering sea,
Thou hast dawned on the waves of my dreaming,
And each thought has a sparkle of thee.
And though, with the white sail distended,
I speed from the vanishing shore,
Thou wilt give to the silence of ocean
The spell of thy beauty the more.

A H , when at night my lady sweet
Loosens the honeyed linen from her thigh,
Girdle and smock and all the warm things lie
Fall'n in a snowdrift round her feet;
Or like the foam that kissed the toes
Of Venus, nailed with pearl,
When from the sea she rose,
The wondrous golden girl.

Then, bending low, I take the sweet cloud up,
Stained through with sweets from arm and breast and thigh,
And, like a greedy gloating butterfly,
Upon the hoarded fragrance sup and sup.
Yea, as I feast upon my lady's clothes,
I dream I am a bee, and they a rose.