Poems & poèmes/The Phantom Guest

by Natalie Clifford Barney

 

THE PHANTOM GUEST

We lay in shade diaphanous
And spoke the light that burns in us

As in the glooming's net I caught her,
She shimmered like reflected water !

Romantic and emphatic moods
Are not for her whom life eludes . . .

Its vulgar tinsel round her fold ?
She'd rather shudder with the cold.

Attend just this elusive hour,
A shadow in a shadow bower,

A moving imagery so fine,
It must have been her soul near mine

And so we blended and possessed
Each in each the phantom guest.

Inseparate, we scarcely met;
Yet other love-nights we forget !

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