Till the sun sprang blood-bright and violent." So finishing, her soft strength wholly spent, She gazed each way, lest some brute-hoovèd thing, The timeless travail of hell's childbearing, Should threat upon the sudden: whereat he, For relish of her tasted misery And tender little thornprick of her pain, Laughed with mere love. What lover among men But hath his sense fed sovereignly 'twixt whiles With tears and covered eyelids and sick smiles And soft disaster of a painèd face? What pain, established in so sweet a place, But the plucked leaf of it smells fragrantly? What colour burning man's wide-open eye But may be pleasurably seen? what sense Keeps in its hot sharp extreme violence No savour of sweet things? The bereaved blood And emptied flesh in their most broken mood Fail not so wholly, famish not when thus Past honey keeps the starved lip covetous. Therefore this speech from a glad mouth began, Breathed in her tender hair and temples wan Like one prolonged kiss while the lips had breath. "Sleep, that abides in vassalage of death And in death's service wears out half his age, Hath his dreams full of deadly vassalage, Shadow and sound of things ungracious; Fair shallow faces, hooded bloodless brows, And mouths past kissing; yea, myself have had As harsh a dream as holds your eyelids sad. "This dream I tell you came three nights ago; In full mid sleep I took a whim to know How sweet things might be; so I turned and thought; But save my dream all sweet availed me not. First came a smell of pounded spice and scent Such as God ripens in some continent Of utmost amber in the Syrian sea; And breaths as though some costly rose could be Spoiled slowly, wasted by some bitter fire To burn the sweet out leaf by leaf, and tire The flower's poor heart with heat and waste, to make Strong magic for some perfumed woman's sake. Then a cool naked sense beneath my feet Of bud and blossom; and sound of veins that beat As if a lute should play of its own heart And fearfully, not smitten of either part; And all my blood it filled with sharp and sweet As gold swoln grain fills out the huskèd wheat; So I rose naked from the bed, and stood Counting the mobile measure in my blood Some pleasant while, and through each limb there came Swift little pleasures pungent as a flame, Felt in the thrilling flesh and veins as much As the outer curls that feel the comb's first touch Thrill to the roots and shiver as from fire; And blind between my dream and my desire I seemed to stand and held my spirit still Lest this should cease. A child whose fingers spill Honey from cells forgotten of the bee Is less afraid to stir the hive and see Some wasp's bright back inside, than I to feel Some finger-touch disturb the flesh like steel. I prayed thus; Let me catch a secret here So sweet, it sharpens the sweet taste of fear