Page:Collected poems Robinson, Edwin Arlington.djvu/288

 In your discrimination, the large honor Of sharing with her a small kind of supper." "Yes, you are like a tree, or like a flower; More like a flower to-night." He bowed his head And kissed the ten small fingers he was holding, As calmly as if each had been a son; Although his heart was leaping and his eyes Had sight for nothing save a swimming crimson Between two glimmering arms. "More like a flower To-night," he said, as now he scanned again The immemorial meaning of her face And drew it nearer to his eyes. It seemed A flower of wonder with a crimson stem Came leaning slowly and regretfully To meet his will a flower of change and peril That had a clinging blossom of warm olive Half stifled with a tyranny of black, And held the wayward fragrance of a rose Made woman by delirious alchemy. She raised her face and yoked his willing neck With half her weight; and with hot lips that left The world with only one philosophy For Merlin or for Anaxagoras, Called his to meet them and in one long hush Of capture to surrender and make hers The last of anything that might remain Of what was now their beardless wizardry. Then slowly she began to push herself Away, and slowly Merlin let her go As far from him as his outreaching hands Could hold her fingers while his eyes had all The beauty of the woodland and the world Before him in the firelight, like a nymph Of cities, or a queen a little weary Of inland stillness and immortal trees.