Whym Chow: Flame of Love :: :: University of Virginia Library

Full of the passions nurtured in the wild
And virgin places of the world, Whym Chow,
Thou camest to thy Mistress, as a child
Untameable of earth, and none knew how,
Save she, to mould thy untranslatable,
And native being, personality
Risen from primæval force and under spell:
A solitary creature that must be
Lone, till there lighted in its heart a star,
First love. O infinite and savage, yet
Of sweetest temper as those creatures are
That never had a hand on them nor let
Any save Nature's hand approach them near.
Thou wert far back from anything men write,
Far deeper in imagination's rear
Than books can delve or poet's lingering sight
Reach in the past of ages. Love alone
Threw on the dark of forests in thy soul
A flashlight to recesses never shown,
Where thou wert softly moving to one goal—
Love of thy Mistress, not of kind—a new
Compulsion from that Eros who began
Forth of God's breast the darkness to subdue,
And lead it to a bliss that stars should span.