LONDON MAGDALENE
How she is careful to make manifest
The budded beauty of her breast;
To hint beneath her unconcealing blouse
The curved seductions there that house.
Would that some Christ your mournful care had seen,
Unmaidened maiden, London Magdalene.
God gave you roses warm from Paradise,
And they are bleaker now than ice.
God gave you fountains flowing honey-sweet,
And they are spilt upon the street.
All your seductions are the Dead Sea Fruit,
O rifled nest, blown flower, O string-snapt lute.
In those breast-seas no baby-boat will swim
Through channels warm and dim;
You'll not awake to a twittering in the leaves
When baby bird-throat heaves.
Poor London Magdalene, before you sleep,
Ah weep with me, if not too late to weep.
SECRET GIRL
(To Bessie McKellen)
Thy nudity, like a white flame,
I shall inviolably guard:
O Secret Girl, mine eyes have yet
Not in the place of mortals met.
O Secret Girl whom, splendour-starred,
Some lordly noon my soul shall claim.
More than the Brahman Heart of Ind,
I shall be spears about thy breasts:
When thou no more, O Secret Goal,
Art secret from mine eyes and soul,
O Mother of my waiting nests,
O dew and dark, O day and wind.
Thou shalt be sheer beyond the wars,
And sacred from the waste of words:
O Secret Girl, O Dove, O Pard,
I shall inviolably guard.
For we shall crowd the trees with birds,
The sky with swarms of shouting stars!