Ah that my lips were tuneless lips, but pressed To the bruised blossom of thy scourged white breast! Ah that my mouth for Muses' milk were fed On the sweet blood thy sweet small wounds had bled! That with my tongue I felt them, and could taste The faint flakes from thy bosom to the waist! That I could drink thy veins as wine, and eat Thy breasts like honey! that from face to feet Thy body were abolished and consumed, And in my flesh thy very flesh entombed! Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites, Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites. Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet, The paces and the pauses of thy feet! Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair! Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong, Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song; Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white, And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells, With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells And blood like purple blossom at the tips Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die, Die of thy pain and my delight, and be Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee! Would I not plague thee dying overmuch? Would I not hurt thee perfectly? not touch Thy pores of sense with torture, and make bright Thine eyes with bloodlike tears and grievous light? Strike pang from pang as note is struck from note, Catch the sob's middle music in thy throat, Take thy limbs living, and new-mould with these A lyre of many faultless agonies? Feed thee with fever and famine and fine drouth, With perfect pangs convulse thy perfect mouth, Make thy life shudder in thee and burn afresh, And wring thy very spirit through the flesh? Cruel? but love makes all that love him well As wise as heaven and crueller than hell. Me hath love made more bitter toward thee Than death toward man; but were I made as he Who hath made all things to break them one by one, If my feet trod upon the stars and sun And souls of men as his have alway trod, God knows I might be crueller than God. For who shall change with prayers or thanksgivings The mystery of the cruelty of things? Or say what God above all gods and years With offering and blood-sacrifice of tears, With lamentation from strange lands, from graves Where the snake pastures, from scarred mouths of slaves, From prison, and from plunging prows of ships Through flamelike foam of the sea's closing lips-- With thwartings of strange signs, and wind-blown hair Of comets, desolating the dim air, When darkness is made fast with seals and bars, And fierce reluctance of disastrous stars, Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills, and wings Darkening, and blind inexpiable things-- With sorrow of labouring moons, and altering light