| T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22. | | | | Sapphic Ode LIV: “Adown the Lesbian vales” | | By Michael Field (Katherine Harris Bradley) (1846–1914) |
| | (From Long Ago, 1889)
ADOWN the Lesbian vales, | |
| When spring first flashes out, | |
| I watch the lovely rout | |
| Of maidens flitting ’mid the honey-bees | |
| For thyme and heath, | 5 |
| Cistus, and trails | |
| Of myrtle-wreath: | |
| They bring me these | |
| My passionate, unsated sense to please. | |
| |
| In turn, to please my maids, | 10 |
| Most deftly will I sing | |
| Of their soft cherishing | |
| In apple-orchards with cool waters by, | |
| Where slumber streams | |
| From quivering shades, | 15 |
| And Cypris seems | |
| To bend and sigh, | |
| Her golden calyx offering amorously. | |
| |
| What praises would be best | |
| Wherewith to crown my girls? | 20 |
| The rose when she unfurls | |
| Her balmy, lighted buds is not so good, | |
| So fresh as they | |
| When on my breast | |
| They lean, and say | 25 |
| All that they would, | |
| Opening their glorious, candid maidenhood. | |
| |
| To that pure band alone | |
| I sing of marriage-loves; | |
| As Aphrodite’s doves | 30 |
| Glance in the sun their colour comes and goes: | |
| No girls let fall | |
| Their maiden zone | |
| At Hymen’s call | |
| Serene as those | 35 |
| Taught by a poet why sweet Hesper glows. | | | | |
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