Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/93

Arebel Plump from Camembert and Clicquot, eyelids Thin as skins of onions, cut like dough 'round the eyes. Such was your look in a photograph I saw In a silver frame on a woman's dresser—and such Your look in life, you thing of flesh alone! And then, As a soul looks down on the body it leaves— A body by fever slain—I look on myself As I was a decade ago, while the letter is read: I enter a box Of a theatre with Jim, my friend of fifty, I being twenty-two. Two women are in the box, One of an age for Jim and one of an age for me. And mine is dressed in a dainty gown of dimity, And she fans herself with a fan of silver spangles, Till a subtle odor of delicate powder or of herself Enters my blood, and I stare at her snowy neck, And the glossy brownness of her hair until She feels my stare and turns half-view and I see How like a Greek's is her nose, with just a little Aquiline touch and I catch the flash of an eye, And the glint of a smile on the richness of her lips.


 * The company now discourses upon the letter

But my dream goes on: I re-live a rapture Which may be madness, and no man understands Until he feels it no more. The youth that was I