La Nue

Oft when sweet music undulated round,
 Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound
 Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.

And in the country, leaf and flower and air
 Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,
 And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.

The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled
 Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled
 That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.

And in the city, dominant desire
 For which men toil within its prison-bars,
I watched thy white feet moving in the mire
 And thy white forehead hid among the stars.

Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,
 Radiant there with rosy arms outspread,
Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude,
 Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,

Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills,
 Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line,
Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills,
 Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;

The gold all color and grace are folded o'er,
 The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, —
Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core,
 The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.

Round thee revolves, illimitably wide,
 The world's desire, as stars around their pole.
Round thee all earthly loveliness beside
 Is but the radiate, infinite aureole.

Thou art the poem on the cosmic page —
 In rubric written on its golden ground —
That Nature paints her flowers and foliage
 And rich-illumined commentary round.

Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears
 Hover about like butterflies and bees.
Thou art the theme the music of the spheres
 Echoes in endless, variant harmonies.

Thou art the idol in the altar-niche
 Faced by Love's congregated worshippers,
Thou art the holy sacrament round which
 The vast cathedral is the universe.

Thou art the secret in the crystal where,
 For the last light upon the mystery Man,
In his lone tower and ultimate despair,
 Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.

And soft and warm as in the magic sphere,
 Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire,
So in my heart thine image would appear,
 Curled round with the red flames of my desire.

All That's Not Love . . .

All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
 The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
 The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway
 Of early desire, nor see when it goes
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
 Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
 The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue
The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,
 But even with their beauty life fades from them too.

No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds
 Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,
That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,
 Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.