Rodin's Eve

This is the mother of the human race,
Standing abashed with half-averted face
Before the glory and splendor of her dream.
In her the vision of the years that seem
Now girdled in dead centuries to wind
In endless flower-chains about the mind —
Treacheries, and ecstacies, and darkened rivers
Of crimson, where they crucify the Givers;
Her beauty is by far more perilous
Than that of her, the sometime mother of us,
Who comes amid the perfect harmony
Of lips and loves, and dwells in ecstasy:
More infinite her labours and her pains….
The seed of all the world is in her veins!