WHEN for the first time I beheld her eyes
Fixing on me their captious, emerald fires,
I felt Desire, which in our shadow prowls,
Grasping my brain with fingers grimly fierce.
Proud or lascivious, or both, no doubt,
It was a dizzy force that bore me down:
So at the forest's heart the ægipan
Clings to the nymph he meshes in his nets,
Filling the thickets with the cries of their
Two nakednesses panting mouth to mouth.
And then we knew moist faintings, sudden starts
Of strength whipped furious, and Luxury
Distilled the poisons of her flowers upon
The bed in fever from our burning frames.
Insatiable nights curved our hot loins
In the exasperated breath we seethed,
And all the floating sex of greedy lemurs
Curled the shrill laugh uncovering our teeth.

So this was love; this was the mystic rite
Before which stands, like Œdipus before
The Sphinx with tempting eyes, the trembling, grave
Inquisitiveness of our thirty years,
When, cheated by ten years of tentatives,
We dart on love the glance of hasty eyes!
This was the rite . . . Yet it was beautiful-
For all that flames is fit to serve as torch,
If but the heart, disdaining grief and ruin,
Will raise its torch to pinnacles of stars.
What makes a body dear for evermore?
Haply a soul dwells in the deepest flesh,
A soul more subtle than a thousand laws
Directing choice by rhythms of our veins,
A soul transforming impulse into wisdom.
But, be it what it may, we are the slaves,
Of this malefic and sublime attraction,
Which gladdens even the brows of criminals.

Chimeric thought of prisoning days to be
Within the chains of hope our hands have forged
At twenty we say easily: I love you!
Later, we class love in a system, this
Is still more puerile than young men's love.
Love is all-powerful; love has not the time
To linger o'er our sentimental theses.
We are unconscious Tantaluses, he
Is thirst.
Shall I someday outlive the sweet
Enchantment and delirium of the flesh,
Which holds already such eternal sense
As never singing chord of lyre can thrill?
It may be. I dream sometimes of a love,
Of a faith keener than the senses' flame,
And burning in the soul's apse quietly,
As burns a sacred fire lit night and day:
Not Dante's bond with reachless Beatrice,
But living ardour, human and creative,
Yet mystical, an immaterial fruit
Gathered in Orfa's groves by Ariel.

O cup of cheerfulness, O precious pyx
Filled with a wine that but a soul might drink,
O woman holding in thyself this future,
I dare not seek . . . And wilt thou dare to come?

translated by Jethro Bithell