HER cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white; | |
| The white girl hardly breathes to-night, | |
| So faint the pulses come and go, | |
| That waken to a smouldering glow | |
| The morbid faintness of her white. | 5 |
| |
| What drowsing heats of sense, desire | |
| Longing and languorous, the fire | |
| Or what white ashes, subtly mesh | |
| The fascinations of her flesh | |
| Into a breathing web of fire? | 10 |
| |
| Only her eyes, only her mouth, | |
| Live, in the agony of drouth, | |
| Athirst for that which may not be: | |
| The desert of virginity | |
| Aches in the hotness of her mouth. | 15 |
| |
| I take her hands into my hands, | |
| Silently, and she understands; | |
| I set my lips upon her lips; | |
| Shuddering to her finger-tips | |
| She strains my hands within her hands. | 20 |
| |
| I set my lips on hers; they close | |
| Into a false and phantom rose; | |
| Upon her thirsting lips I rain | |
| A flood of kisses, and in vain; | |
| Her lips inexorably close. | 25 |
| |
| Through her closed lips that cling to mine, | |
| Her hands that hold me and entwine, | |
| Her body that abandoned lies, | |
| Rigid with sterile ecstasies, | |
| A shiver knits her flesh to mine. | 30 |
| |
| Life sucks into a mist remote | |
| Her fainting lips, her throbbing throat; | |
| Her lips that open to my lips, | |
| And, hot against my finger-tips, | |
| The pulses leaping in her throat. | 35 |
| |
