| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | Love and Sleep | | By Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) |
| | (From Poems and Ballads, 1866)
LYING asleep between the strokes of night | |
| I saw my love lean over my sad bed, | |
| Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head, | |
| Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, | |
| Too wan for blushing and too warm for white, | 5 |
| But perfect-coloured without white or red. | |
| And her lips opened amorously, and said— | |
| I wist not what, saving one word—Delight. | |
| And all her face was honey to my mouth, | |
| And all her body pasture to mine eyes; | 10 |
| The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire, | |
| The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south, | |
| The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs | |
| And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire. | | | | |
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