The second flame Burns red and fierce as noon-time on the earth, A wild, full-blooded love that sprang to birth Naked and unafraid, yet scorning shame And clean as winds that sweep the desert’s breast. My flame of passion this, born of the sun And warm red earth, so æon-long ago, In languid, throbbing noons, when dust was pressed To amorous dust, and longing made it one. This is a good love too, and must be so, Though bloodless fathers crushed it and denied, And on a cross of virtue crucified This firm sweet flesh that colors with our soul. Aye! it is good, and beautiful, and clean, To feel within my veins the surge and flow Of young desire waking, that the whole Warm universe has felt: to call, and preen, And dance before my mate that he may know An answering surge, and leap, and make me his And glad with every fecund thing that is. God! It is good to feel the primal cry, The deep, mad longing for another life,-- My life and his, that shall be born of me,-- A little child of flame, that when we die We may cheat time, nor perish in the strife: But in this hour of vital ecstasy When life is molten, we may stamp thereon Our own glad image, and conceive, and live. And sweet it is, and languid, when the tide Has ebbed, for lack of more than I can give, To take his hand who breathes so close beside And lay it on my breast, and humble me To say: “Thou art my lord. Thy will my own.” So at the last this wish is mine, to be Struck at the high-tide into nothingness, To die, ere he can learn to love me less. So these my loves are perfect, each alone Sufficient in itself and all complete, Yet one of two, like rival beacons shown, That call and call me, but that never meet. For yet they have not met, nor ever burned The white flame in the red, the red in white Till both were wed together there, and turned To some half-dreamed intensity of light. For I have dreamed,--yes, in my priestess soul The longing grows for one great altar fire That shall leap up to heaven, a winged desire, Not two but one, a perfect, living whole. Is this a dream? Are all great lovers dreams? Can red and white be fused, or two be one? Yseult and Eloise, are they but themes Whereon men hang the yearnings they have spun? And must I cherish so till the end’s end My sweet loves sundered, lover here, or friend? Nay, I know not! I guard by day and night My leaping flames, the red one and the white. _The Forum_ _Eloise Briton_ THE LOOK Strephon kissed me in the spring, Robin in the fall, But Colin only looked at me And never kissed at all. Strephon’s kiss was lost in jest, Robin’s lost in play, But the kiss in Colin’s eyes Haunts me night and day.