Suddenly, in the marble trough, there seems
O, last of my pale, mistresses, Sweetness!
A twylipped scarlet pansie. My caress
Tinges thy steelgray eyes to violet.
Adown thy body skips the pit-a-pat
Of treatment once heard in a hospital
For plagues that fascinate, but half appal.
So, at the sound, the blood of me stood cold.
Thy chaste hair ripened into sullen gold.
The throat, the shoulders, swelled and were uncouth.
The breasts rose up and offered each a mouth.
And on the belly pallid blushes crept,
That maddened me, until I laughed and wept.
MISHKA
TO HENRI TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
Mishka is poet among the beasts.
When roots are rotten, and rivers weep.
The bear is at play in the land of sleep.
Though his head be heavy between his fists.
The bear is poet among the beasts.
THE DREAM:
Wide and large are the monster's eyes,
Nought saying, save one word alone:
Mishka! Mishka, as turned to stone,
Hears no word else, nor in anywise
Can see aught save the monster's eyes.
Honey is under the monster's lips;
And Mishka follows into her lair,
dragged in the net of her yellow hair,
Knowing all things when honey drips
On his tongue like rain, the song of the hips
Of the honey-child, and of each twin mound.
Mishka! there screamed a far bird-note,
Deep in the sky, when round his throat
The triple coil of her hair she wound.
And stroked his limbs with a humming sound.
Mishka is white like a hunter's son
Tor he knows no more of the ancient south
When the honey-child's lips are on his mouth,
When all her kisses are joined in one,
And his body is bathed in grass and sun.