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(From A Soul’s Faring, 1921)
I I WILL tell you the things that will ravish your ear to hear, for I am Life’s lover. | |
| She told me her secrets, as she lay in my wanton arms. | |
| She told me the things of her deep yearning, of her secret heart. | |
| She told them to my love for her, to the press of my breast. | |
| She told herself to my kisses. | 5 |
| She met my warm breath with disclosures, as she held me close in an informing embrace. | |
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II I am Life’s lover! | |
| I plant the meaning of my great yearning upon her upturned lips. | |
| I press her to my breast in a great answering. | |
| She shall define the meaning of my fire and fever. | 10 |
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III I am the love-mad of life. | |
| I have reached out in my pain to the love-frenzied grouse. | |
| I have called in my understanding to the deer in their rutting season. | |
| I have come with gentle words to the mating chirpings in the eaves. | |
| I have touched tenderly the seeking pollen. | 15 |
| I have come with bated breath to the spawn at the beginnings of streams. | |
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| I am the ache of overfullness. | |
| My breasts are crowded with containing. | |
| My hands tremble with the eagerness of me. | |
| I am rent and torn with the pain of the unexpressed. | 20 |
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IV I am drunk with being,— | |
| Life’s inebriate reeling down an enchanted way. | |
| I shout my maudlin greeting to the trees. | |
| I grasp familiarly the gentle fingers of the grass. | |
| I press my wine-wet lips to the roses with my insistent kissing. | 25 |
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V I know the thrill of the grasses when the rain pours over them. | |
| I know the trembling of the leaves when the winds sweep through them. | |
| I know what the white clover felt as it held a drop of dew pressed close in its beauteousness. | |
| I know the quivering of the fragrant petals at the touch of the pollen-legged bees. | |
| I know what the stream said to the dipping willows, and what the moon said to the sweet lavender. | 30 |
| I know what the stars said when they came stealthily down and crept fondly into the tops of the trees. | |
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VI I am the omnipotent life, the potency-thrill. | |
| I am the fructifier meeting the urge of space, scattering my spawn like the dust of stars in the Milky Way. | |
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| I am red fire leaping in and out of channels, the insistence of me, the yearning. | |
| I am the demand. | 35 |
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VII I am drunk with the wine of me, intoxicant of my own being, | |
| Bacchante of my own soul’s steepings, | |
| Beset by the realization of me, driven by knowing. | |
| I pour myself out like the singing starling. | |
| I drink, and kiss Life’s wanton lips with the dripping lips of me. | 40 |
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VIII I am the universe’s harlot, | |
| Selling myself to ecstasy’s thrills; | |
| Giving myself to be debauched of stars, ravished of ineffableness; | |
| Seduced by a wanton ungraspableness; | |
| Coming to marriage bed with infinity’s horde, | 45 |
| Wanton wife of the eternity of things. | |
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