Page:Hephaestus, Persephone at Enna, and Sappho in Leucadia.djvu/40

 :Then did your body seem a temple white
 * And I a worshipper who found therein
 * No god beyond the gracious marble, yet
 * Most meekly kneeled, and learned that I must love.
 * The bloom of youth was on your sunburnt cheek,
 * The streams of life sang thro’ your violet veins,
 * The midnight velvet of your tangled hair
 * Lured, as a twilight rill, my passionate hands;
 * The muscles ran and rippled on your back
 * Like wind on evening waters, and your arm
 * Seemed one to cherish, or as sweetly crush.
 * The odour of your body sinuous
 * And saturate with sun and sea-air was
 * As Lesbian wine to me, and all your voice
 * A pain that took me back to times unknown;
 * And all the ephemeral glory of the flesh,—
 * The mystic sad bewilderment of warmth
 * And life amid the coldness of the world
 * Did seem to me so feeble on the Deep,
 * Poised like a sea-bird on some tumbling crest
 * As you called faintly back across the waves,
 * That one must love it as a little flower—
 * So strange, that one must guard it as a child.
 * Some spirit of the Sea crept in our veins
 * And through long immemorial afternoons
 * We mused and dreamed, and wave by pensive wave
 * Strange moods stole over us, and lo, we loved!


 * Oh, had you gone while still that glory fell