The Downing legends : Stories in Rhyme :: :: University of Virginia Library

He found her dancing like a breeze,
In raiment delicate as mist
And shorter than her dimpled knees,
While lovingly the moonlight kissed
Her arms from shoulder down to wrist.

He found her dancing like the seas,
The bacchant seas, when tempests pour
Their mighty music far from shore;
When every frantic triton blows
His shell for laughing sprite and gnome,
And every billow naiad throws
Abroad her draperies of foam.
He called her fiercely, “Yesebel!”
For still he greatly feared to see
The lurid entrances of Hell.
She answered, singing, “Come to me!”

He looked; he saw the pearly teeth,
The coral curl of chanting lips,
The ebon hair in tossing wreath,
The levin glance, the bosom's swell,
The rosy hands athwart the hips,
The twinkling feet, the maenad glee;
And all his puny anger fell,
A falling star, to quick eclipse.
No power had he to bid her nay,

No power to turn and speed away,
But dazzled stared with panting breath,
The feeblest man of feeble clay
That ever reeled in ways of death.