Recaptured Rhymes :: :: University of Virginia Library

Look in my face, and know me who I am.
I smite and save; I bless, and, lo, I damn.
Incline thine head, thy browless brow incline;
I touch thee, and I tap thee, and proclaim,
For ever and for ever thou art mine!

O long as grief, and leaner than desire!
O sweet retreating breasts and amorous-kissing knees!
O grace and goodliness of strait attire!
A robe of them who sport in summer seas.

By these, and by the eyelids of thine eyes,
Ringed round with darkness, swollen weeper-wise,
By these I know thee; these are for a sign,
Surer, yea, even than thy most splendid size
Of spreaden hands: I know thee, thou art mine.

The Damosel.

Master and lord, I know thee who thou art;
Lo, and with homage of the stricken heart,
I hail thee, I adore thee, and obtest:
I am thine own, I know no better part;
Do with me, master as thee seemeth best.

O loose as thought and bodiless as a dream!
O globular grand eyes, a bane of maidenhood!
O miracle of tunic-folds that seem
Self-balanced, firm, a glory of carven wood.

By these, and by the crown thy temples wear,
Holy, a cauline flower of wondrous hair;
By thy red mouth, a bow without a chord,

And shaftless, yea, but deadly, O most fair.
I knew thee, and I know thee for my lord!

The God.
Ay, now the flicker of a nauseate smile
Bestirs thy cheek and wan lips imbecile;
Thy pale plucked blossom droops; its day is done.

The Damosel.
Nay, let me deck my bosom therewithal,
It were ill-ominous to let it fall,
The faithful mistress of Hyperion Sun.

The God.
Stoop thou—what ails thee, child, to shudder?—stoop and brush
Hair with tow-towzled hair, that for a space
I breathe my godhead through thy thirsting veins, and flush
The soft submalar hollows of thy face,

And thrill thee, crown to sole, till that in downward rush
Of eager ecstasy with fair flat feet thou crush
The beetle, Virtue, in the lowly place.

The Damosel.

Ah, master and lord, I feel it; the wind of thy fierce delight,
Hell-hot as the blast from the furnace, sea-cold as a gust of the sea.
O deaf blind Love, that art deaf as a poker and blind as the night!
O my flushed faint cheeks and my chin! O mine eye and the elbow of me!

I bow to thy might, O my lord, to the keen-blown breath of thy lips,
With a loathing of love that longs, and a longing of love that loathes,

With shiver of angular shoulders, and shake of invisible hips,
As boweth the light slight stake in the torture of wind-whirled clothes!

Thou hast rent me enough, O Divine! . . . and behold, thou stayest thine hand,
And leavest me crushed as a reed, that I wot not whether I tread
Upon Earth, our holy old mother, with feet downpressing, or stand
Inverse in a fearless new fashion, uplift on my passionate head!