I saw him go down to the water to bathe;
He stood naked upon the bank.
His breast was like a white cloud in the heaven,
that catches the sun;
It swelled with the sharp joy of the air.
His legs rose with the spring and curve of young birches;
The hollow of his back caught the blue shadows:
With his head thrown up to the lips of the wind;
And the curls of his forehead astir with the wind.
I would that I were a man, they are so beautiful;
Their bodies are like the bows of the Indians;
They have the spring and the grace of bows of hickory.
I know that women are beautiful, and that I am beautiful;
But the beauty of a man is so lithe and alive and triumphant,
Swift as the night of a swallow and sure as the
pounce of the eagle.
I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night.
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman's fingers on my cheek.
And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;
The night went on with me into my dream.
This only I remember, that I cried:
"O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,
Sing me one song of those lost books of yours
For which we poets still go sorrowing;
That when I meet my fellows on the earth
I may rejoice them more than many pearls;"
And she, the sweetly smiling, answered me,
As one who dreams, "I have forgotten them."