ppal.

IV

So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold.
Thy chaste hair ripened into sullen gold.
The throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth.
The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth.
And on the belly pallid blushes crept,
That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.

MISHKA

TO HENRI TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

Mishka is poet among the beasts.
When roots are rotten, and rivers weep.
The bear is at play in the land of sleep.
Though his head be heavy between his fists.
The bear is poet among the beasts.

THE DREAM:

Wide and large are the monster's eyes,
Nought saying, save one word alone:
Mishka! Mishka, as turned to stone,
Hears no word else, nor in anywise
Can see aught save the monster's eyes.

Honey is under the monster's lips;
And Mishka follows into her lair,
dragged in the net of her yellow hair,
Knowing all things when honey drips
On his tongue like rain, the song of the hips

Of the honey-child, and of each twin mound.
Mishka! there screamed a far bird-note,
Deep in the sky, when round his throat
The triple coil of her hair she wound.
And stroked his limbs with a humming sound.

Mishka is white like a hunter's son
Tor he knows no more of the ancient south
When the honey-child's lips are on his mouth,
When all her kisses are joined in one,
And his body is bathed in grass and sun.

The shadows lie mauven beneath the trees,
And purple stains, where the finches pass,
Leap in the stalks of the deep, rank grass.
Flutter of-wing, and the buzz of bees,
Deepen the silence, and sweeten ease.

The honey-child is an olive tree,
The voice of birds and the voice of flowers,
Each of them all and all the hours,
The honey-child is a winged bee,
Her touch is a perfume, a melody.

SUMMER PAST

TO OSCAR WILDE

There was the summer. There
Warm hours of leaf-lipped song,
And dripping amber sweat.
O sweet to see
The great trees condescend to cast a pearl
Down to the myrtles; and the proud leaves curl
In ecstasy.

Fruit of a quest, despair.
Smart of a sullen wrong.
Where may they hide them yet?
One hour, yet one,
To find the mossgod lurking in his nest,
To see the naiads' floating hair, caressed
By fragrant sun.

Beams. Softly lulled the eves
The song-tired birds to sleep,
That other things might tell
Their secrecies.
The beetle humming neath the fallen leaves.
Deep in what hollow do the stern gods ke