O my Beloved, when to-day you said:
“All this must perish and we two will go
Soulless and senseless, to the dust below!”
I could but smile and fondle your dear head.
I could but catch your fingers as they fled
Over my throbbing breasts and whisper low,
“Whence came this breast to lure your fingers’ flow?
These burning pulses, leaping passion-fed?”

Dearest, you had no answer. But your blood
Drawing from mine the primal fires of God,
Leapt, laughed, and shouted, panting into mine—
“Love…love is all; and sweeps in mighty flood

I know no miracle so manifest
As that you wrought upon me yesterday,
Filling with love my chalice of pure clay
From fragrant fountains of your own dear breast.
Beaten and sad, with aching eyes I pressed
Close unto you, and, as my body lay,
Broken with pain and grief, you murmured, “Stay,
I am the deathless end of all your quest.”

I lifted up my bowed and weeping head,
Borrowing comfort from your arms and eyes.
I felt your lips, long-climbing to my own,
And knew the best of me was not all dead.
I, who had fallen out of Paradise,

Dearest, there is no part of us, but air
And earth are counterparts. Your fragrant eyes
Touching my own, some essence of the skies
Instil therein, and all your warm, brown hair
Smells of the sun’s slow passion, fine and fair.
I cannot touch your hands but I surprise
Some element of summer; and the sighs
Of stars from your red lips I seem to share.

O Love…Love…Love…Dearer than God to me.
Earth of the earth are we and light of light.
God-born, God-breathing, all our scented souls
In Death will glow, gladdening eternity.

If there should be a moon above the hill
To-night, dip down with me into the sea
Of our first passion, and, with naked glee,
Breathe its ripe wonder to our beings’ fill.
O, as the moonbeams on the violets spill
Rivers of uncontrolled felicity,
We’ll tune our bodies to a melody
And set our pulses to a poet’s thrill.

Love…Love…Your hot lips tremble on my eyes.
You droop. You swoon in silence over me…
Heaven, out of yours, my very eyelids sup.
The stars are running out of Paradise…
I languish, perfumed with expectancy…

Beloved, lest I should remember, I
Must swift forget the wonder of last night.
Hot memory would but blacken out my sight
And dull my senses till they seemed to die.
How could I live, remembering that sigh…
That breath…that sob…that all sublime delight?
Eternal joy is death, I think, and might
Not such sweet madness kill me, coming nigh?

I died with you that hour. Or, if not, merged
Myself in you, commingling all my life
Within your own, until I fled and fled
Into your blood; and my pure pulses surged,

Love, you have brought to me my perfect soul,
More sweet than earthly things, more precious rare,
Hiding its fragrance in my loosened hair
And folding up my body like a scroll.
O, lie with me all night, and let the roll
Of Rapture’s waves wash over us, as, bare
Of anything save Love, we haply share
The joys of our first parents’ chaste control.

My Love, my piece of Heaven God has spilled
Upon my outstretched hands, O, kiss me yet.
Here, lying close to you, I feel—I know,
My being, even now, is charged and filled

In me there is a vast and lonely place,
Where none, not even you, have walked in sight.
A wide, still vale of solitude and light,
Where Silence echoes into ebbing space.
And there I creep at times and hide my face,
While in myself I fathom wrong and right,
And all the timeless ages of the night
That sacred silence of my soul I pace.

And when from there I come to you, love-swift,
My mouth hot-edged with kisses fresh as wine,
Often I find your longings all asleep
And unresponsive from my grasp you drift.

Love is the sepulchre of all my sin,
If it be sin to let the body sink
In that slow dying the sick senses drink
That ne’er have felt true Love’s delight rush in.
Hot Vice may sear the bloom of Beauty’s skin
Polluting Virtue with a painted wink,
But Love smiles lightly at such guilt, I think,
And cures corruption e’er her ills begin.

I cannot tell the wonder of desire
That flames my cheek when you are by my side.
Nor dare I speak the secret of that bliss
That sets the senses of my soul on fire.
Ah Love! all my sin vanished into pride

My true mind makes as many loves of you
As my full heart contentedly can hold.
And when the one grows dull, the other cold,
Yet comes another swifter in to woo.
I could not rue such changing retinue
Nor chastise circumstance that keeps me bold.
I make you young or middle-aged or old
Just as it pleases my own whim to do.

And then to counterbalance what you give
Thus all unwittingly, I smile or frown,
Am thoughtful, mirthful, grave or sunny-eyed
To meet your mood and help you best to live.
In me, all women to your wish bow down.

And then came Science with her torch red-lit
And cosmic marvels round her glowing head—
The primal cell, the worm, the quadruped—
Striving to make each to the other fit.
Tongue-trumpeting her own unchallenged wit,
She offered me the woof of Wisdom’s thread,
And Truth and Purity that hourly tread
The paths where sages in their wonder sit.

And still I smiled and kissed you with a sob.
My lips on yours, I heard, high up above
Love’s feet ring laughter on the starry sod
And felt the echo through our bosoms throb.