Classic Poem

Many poems have I written unto thee, good and bad,
And many more have I not uttered,
For the words came not. Ay, those feeble little words
That leap so easily from the lips of the speaker
And fall dead upon the ground, they came not:
For they were fearful of the burden of my thought,
And my passion shrivelled them up as leaves in a hot fire.
My thoughts were like lightning playing upon the hills,
They hovered about thy beauty as lightning upon the sea;
Pale, cold is thy beauty, aloof from the warm arms of the earth,
Sparkling like a robe of jewels laid for the ghostly moon;
No one shall joy of thee, only the black headlands behold thee,
Staring like blind men in the night, haunted by the lapping waves
For thy movements are like waves and all waters,
Mocking and stirring the senses even to where the soul dwelleth,
Withdrawn to forgotten recesses, forgotten of thee and the waters,
Careless of all thy cold beauty, hearing the wind's soft voices,
And the warmth of the old earth breathing.

If in the cold dead darkness thine eyes should open and seek me,
If in the dead white moonlight thou shouldst stir and awaken,
If in all thy pale beauty thou shouldst stretch warm arms forth to meet me,
I would turn once again and love thee, forgetting the wind's soft voices
I would rise from the warm earth's bosom, shake the dust from my feet and take thee,
Envelop thee as in a garment and bury my face in thy hair,
And kiss the blood to thy cheeks, and to thine eyes and ears,
Till it danced through thy body like music:
I would grip thy pale little hands, hurting them ever so slowly
Until thy lips parted beseeching, then would I kiss them silent.
O thou soul of the world, words have I not for music,
But a wild and flaming spirit that hunts like an outlawed robber
Building pillars of smoke in the lonely deserts of night,
Seeking a vision of beauty, a haunting far-off vision
That came to him once as he rode with the kisses of dawn on his forehead.
And sudden and swift without warning the sea stretched shining before him,
Not dead but awake and living, caressing the sleeping earth
With a thousand tender touches — the earth all unconscious and sleeping:
Pale was the sea as thou art, a web of shadowed opal,
Soft and mysterious, quivering, with countless meshes of light,
But alive with a soft exulting, a warm and passionate greeting
As I stepped down and possessed thee, Aphrodite! my long, long loved one!
And felt thy soft, timid embraces as in my wild passion I kissed thee,
And kissed thee until thou wert silent and breathed in my arms like a child.
And the world stopped still, and the Morning,
In her golden chariot waiting, stood at the Eastern Portal.