At Dawn

Whether it withhold its perfume or lavish it —
a slumber is mine, in my closed chamber;
a pillow that drank deep the fragrance of her hair —
what is the breath of the forests in the East beside it!!
I breathed the blaze of perfume from her hair —
O mountains of perfume, send up no fragrance.
A ransom to the memory of my night, O forenoon,
be all the sun promises, and all that gathers
of the revelry of blazing light upon our shore,
and a wandering in the blue twilight.

Here... the light of her shadows came swaying;
here... I lay sleepless in a longing languor;
here a bed wrapped her, tenderly,
in the shyness of nakedness — and showed no pity;
and her body — how it moaned with rapture
and with wildness, abandoned, fearing nothing,
toiling for us with a sweet cruelty —
O wearier of bodies, show no gentleness.

The blaze that clamors in our depths
neither shelters in illusion, nor drinks of it.