In one bolero mad, supreme,
Rough-resurrected, powerful,
Showing beneath her kirtle's gleam
The ribbon wrested from the bull.
About her throat the scar of red
The deathblow was, dealt silently
Unto a generation dead
By every new-born century.
I saw this self-same phantom fleet,
All Paris ringing with her praise,
When soft, diaphanous, mystic, sweet,
La Petra Camara held its gaze,—
Closing her eyes with languor rare,
Impassive, passionate of art,
And, like the murdered Ines fair,
Dancing, a dagger in her heart.
ODELET
AFTER ANACREON
Poet of her face divine,
Curb this over-zeal of thine!
Doves wing frighted from the ground
At a step's too sudden sound,
And her passion is a dove,
Frighted by too bold a love.
Mute as marble Hermes wait
By the blooming hawthorn-gate.
Thou shalt see her wings expand,
She shall flutter to thy hand.
On thy forehead thou shalt know
Something like a breath of snow,
Or of pinions pure that beat
In a whirl of whiteness sweet.
And the dove, grown venturesome,
Shall upon thy shoulder come,
And its rosy beak shall sip
From the nectar of thy lip.
SMOKE