She could not stay me, being dead;
Her body here was mine to hold.
What if her lips had lost their red?
To me they always tasted cold
With the cold words she said.
Did my breath run along her hair,
And free the pulse, and fire the brain,
My wild blood wake her wild blood there?
Her eyelids lifted wide again
In a blue, sudden stare.
Beneath my fierce, profane caress
The whole white length of body moved;
The drowsy bosom seemed to press
As if against a breast beloved,
Then fail for weariness.
No, not that anguish! Christ forbid
That I should raise such dead! I rose,
Stifled the mouth with lilies, hid
Those eyes, and drew the long hair close,
And shut the coffin lid.
My cold brow on the cold wood laid,
Quiet and close to-night we lie.
No cruel words her lips have said.
I shall not take nor she deny.
The dead is with the dead.
LEDA.
Do you remember, Leda?
There are those who love, to whom Love brings
Great gladness: such thing have not I.
Love looks and has no mercy, brings
Long doom to others. Such was I.
Heart breaking hand upon the lute,
Touching one note only ... such were you.
Who shall play now upon that lute
Long last made musical by you?
Sharp bird-beak in the swelling fruit,
Blind frost upon the eyes of flowers.
Who shall now praise the shrivelled fruit,
Or raise the eyelids of those flowers?
I dare not watch that hidden pool,
Nor see the wild bird's sudden wing
Lifting the wide, brown, shaken pool,
But round me falls that secret wing,
And in that sharp, perverse, sweet pain
That is half-terror and half-bliss
My withered hands are curled on pain
That were so wide once after bliss.
And gold is springing in my hair
As my thoughts spring and flower with it,
Though I sit hid in my grey hair,
Without love or the pain of it.