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(From Love Poems and Others, 1913)
II IS it with pain, my dear, that you shudder so? | |
| Is it because I have hurt you with pain, my dear? | |
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| Did I shiver?—Nay, truly I did not know— | |
| A dewdrop may-be splashed on my face down here. | |
| Why even now you speak through close-shut teeth. | 5 |
| I have been too much for you—Ah, I remember! | |
| The ground is a little chilly underneath | |
| The leaves—and, dear, you consume me all to an ember. | |
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| You hold yourself all hard as if my kisses | |
| Hurt as I gave them—you put me away— | 10 |
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| Ah never I put you away: yet each kiss hisses | |
| Hot as a drop of fire wastes me away. | |
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III I am ashamed, you wanted me not to-night— | |
| Nay, it is always so, you sigh with me. | |
| Your radiance dims when I draw too near, and my free | 15 |
| Fire enters your petals like death, you wilt dead white. | |
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| Ah, I do know, and I am deep ashamed; | |
| You love me while I hover tenderly | |
| Like clinging sunbeams kissing you; but see | |
| When I close in fire upon you, and you are flamed | 20 |
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| With the swiftest fire of my love, you are destroyed. | |
| ’Tis a degradation deep to me, that my best | |
| Soul’s whitest lightning which should bright attest | |
| God stepping down to earth in one white stride, | |
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| Means only to you a clogged, numb burden of flesh | 25 |
| Heavy to bear, even heavy to uprear | |
| Again from earth, like lilies wilted and sere | |
| Flogged on the floor, that before stood up so fresh. | |
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