Outside it must be winter among men; For at the gold bars of the gates again I heard all night and all the hours of it The wind's wet wings and fingers drip with rain. Knights gather, riding sharp for cold; I know The ways and woods are strangled with the snow; And with short song the maidens spin and sit Until Christ's birthnight, lily-like, arow. The scent and shadow shed about me make The very soul in all my senses ache; The hot hard night is fed upon my breath, And sleep beholds me from afar awake. Alas, but surely where the hills grow deep, Or where the wild ways of the sea are steep, Or in strange places somewhere there is death, And on death's face the scattered hair of sleep. There lover-like with lips and limbs that meet They lie, they pluck sweet fruit of life and eat; But me the hot and hungry days devour, And in my mouth no fruit of theirs is sweet. No fruit of theirs, but fruit of my desire, For her love's sake whose lips through mine respire; Her eyelids on her eyes like flower on flower, Mine eyelids on mine eyes like fire on fire. So lie we, not as sleep that lies by death, With heavy kisses and with happy breath; Not as man lies by woman, when the bride Laughs low for love's sake and the words he saith. For she lies, laughing low with love; she lies And turns his kisses on her lips to sighs, To sighing sound of lips unsatisfied, And the sweet tears are tender with her eyes. Ah, not as they, but as the souls that were Slain in the old time, having found her fair; Who, sleeping with her lips upon their eyes, Heard sudden serpents hiss across her hair. Their blood runs round the roots of time like rain: She casts them forth and gathers them again; With nerve and bone she weaves and multiplies Exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain. Her little chambers drip with flower-like red, Her girdles, and the chaplets of her head, Her armlets and her anklets; with her feet She tramples all that winepress of the dead. Her gateways smoke with fume of flowers and fires, With loves burnt out and unassuaged desires; Between her lips the steam of them is sweet, The languor in her ears of many lyres. Her beds are full of perfume and sad sound, Her doors are made with music, and barred round With sighing and with laughter and with tears, With tears whereby strong souls of men are bound. There is the knight Adonis that was slain; With flesh and blood she chains him for a chain; The body and the spirit in her ears Cry, for her lips divide him vein by vein. Yea, all she slayeth; yea, every man save me; Me, love, thy lover that must cleave to thee Till the ending of the days and ways of earth, The shaking of the sources of the sea.