Then did your body seem a temple white
And I a worshipper who found therein
No god beyond the gracious marble, yet
Most meekly kneeled, and learned that I must love.
The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek,
The streams of life sang thro’ your violet veins,
The midnight velvet of your tangled hair
Lured, as a twilight rill, my passionate hands;
The muscles ran and rippled on your back
Like wind on evening waters, and your arm
Seemed one to cherish, or as sweetly crush.
The odour of your body sinuous
And saturate with sun and sea-air was
As Lesbian wine to me, and all your voice
A pain that took me back to times unknown;
And all the ephemeral glory of the flesh,—
The mystic sad bewilderment of warmth
And life amid the coldness of the world
Did seem to me so feeble on the Deep,
Poised like a sea-bird on some tumbling crest
As you called faintly back across the waves,
That one must love it as a little flower—
So strange, that one must guard it as a child.
Some spirit of the Sea crept in our veins
And through long immemorial afternoons
We mused and dreamed, and wave by pensive wave
Strange moods stole over us, and lo, we loved!
Oh, had you gone while still that glory fell
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