| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922. |
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| A Bather |
| | | Amy Lowell (1874–1925) |
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| THICK dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade. | |
| Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, | |
| Half-quenched in their various green, just a point of you showing, | |
| A knee or a thigh, sudden glimpsed, then at once blotted into | |
| The filmy and flickering forest, to start out again | 5 |
| Triumphant in smooth, supple roundness, edged sharp as white ivory, | |
| Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting your lips and your breasts, | |
| Swelling out from the green in the opulent curves of ripe fruit, | |
| And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence of leaves. | |
| So, clinging to branches and moss, you advance on the ledges | 10 |
| Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you, | |
| The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum-oozing spruces, | |
| While below runs the water impatient, impatient—to take you, | |
| To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness, | |
| Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders, | 15 |
| Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty, | |
| Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold you, | |
| To keep you submerged and quiescent while over you glories | |
| The summer. | |
| Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just | 20 |
| Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant perfection, | |
| Standing up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes | |
| Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence burns up in a halo, | |
| For you are the chalice which holds all the races of men. | |
| You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, | 25 |
| And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow your swimming, | |
| And the scent of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning. | |
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