Part 6 (2/2)

She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows-- And who but knows How the rejoiced heart aches When Venus all his starry vision shakes;

When through his mind Tossing with random airs of an unearthly wind, Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd, The mistress of his starry vision arises, And the boughs glittering sway And the stars pale away, And the enlarging heaven glows As Venus light-foot mid the twined branches goes.

THE CAVES

Like the tide--knocking at the hollowed cliff And running into each green cave as if In the cave's night to keep Eternal motion grave and deep--

That, even while each broken wave repeats Its answered knocking and with bruised hand beats Again, again, again, Tossed between ecstasy and pain;

Still in the folded hollow darkness swells, Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills, Till there's no room for sound Save that old anger rolled around;

So into every hollow cliff of life, Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife, In tunnels I knew not, In lightless labyrinths of thought,

The unresting tide has run and the dark filled, Even the vibration of old strife is stilled; The wave returning bears Muted those time-breathing airs.

--How shall the million-footed tide still tread These hollows and in each cold void cave spread?

How shall Love here keep Eternal motion grave and deep?

MOON-BATHERS

Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burning Into the sea where blackness rims the sea, Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves hold Is only light remaining; yet still gleam The sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathers Came dripping out of the sea and from their arms Shook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edge Of quiet waves. They were all things of light Tossed from the sea to dance under the Moon-- Her nuns, dancing within her dying round, Clear limbs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s silvered with Moon and waves And quick with windlike mood and body's joy, Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and wind Lightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.

An hour ago they left. Remains the gleam Of their late motion on the salt sea-meadow, As loveliest hues linger when the sun's gone And float in the heavens and die in reedy pools-- So slowly, who shall say when light is gone?

IN THOSE OLD DAYS

In those old days you were called beautiful, But I have worn the beauty from your face; The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheek With the harsh years, and the fire in your eyes Burns darker now and deeper, feeding on Beauty and the remembrance of things gone.

Even your voice is altered when you speak, Or is grown mute with old anxiety For me.

Even as a fire leaps into flame and burns Leaping and laughing in its lovely flight, And then under the flame a glowing dome Deepens slowly into blood-like light:-- So did you flame and in flame take delight, So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.

But I still warm me and make there my home, Still beauty and youth burn there invisibly For me.

Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull, My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks, Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught, Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours: Now love undying feeds on love beautiful, Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought ...

--And can it be in your heart's music speaks A deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it be Indeed for me?

CATERPILLARS

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