But oh, hands of me that clasp your sunny head, Drawing it close to my breast, In rapture of its beauty! O temple of your spirit! Spirit of you which I woo and would win, In rapture without will, In rapture blind, save for the inspired urge, In rapture seeking further rapture, In rapture to wed your spirit fully, And all your spirit, which my spirit Through the unity of flesh would reach And win, and keep-- Bride of lightning! Bride of Life! * * * * * As when the butterfly slowly moves his wings Drawing from the virgin core of honeysuckles The sweetest drop of dew:-- So pause his wings spread wide When all is gained. * * * * * Goddess of the white dawn, Let my beloved sleep-- Robins that sing at dawn, Wake not my beloved! I sleep with my beloved, And she sleeps with me, And a life sleeps now That will wake! THE WORLD'S DESIRE At Philae, in the temple of Isis, The fruitful and terrible goddess, Under a running panel of the sacred ibis, Is pictured the dead body of Osiris Waiting the resurrection morn. And a priest is pouring water blue as iris Out of a pitcher on the stalk of corn That from the body of the god is growing, Before the rising tides of the Nile are flowing. And over the pictured body is this inscription In the temple of Isis, the Egyptian: This is the nameless one, whom Isis decrees Not to be named, the god of life and yearning, Osiris of the mysteries, Who springs from the waters ever returning. At the gate of the Lord's house, Ezekiel, the prophet, beheld the abomination of Babylon: Women with sorrow on their brows In lamentation, weeping For the bereavement of Ishtar and for Tammuz sleeping, And for the summer gone. Tammuz has passed below To the house of darkness and woe, Where dust lies on the bolt and on the floor Behind the winter's iron door; And Ishtar has followed him, Leaving the meadows gray, the orchards dim With driving rain and mist, And winds that mourn. Ishtar has vanished, and all life has ceased; No flower blossoms and no child is born. But not as Mary Magdalen came to the tomb, The women in the gardens of Adonis, Crying, "The winter sun is yet upon us," Planted in baskets seeds of various bloom, Which sprouted like frail hopes, then wilted down For the baskets' shallow soil. Then for a beauty dead, a futile toil, For leaves that withered, yellow and brown, From the gardens of Adonis into the sea, They cast the baskets of their hope away: A ritual of the things that cease to be, Brief loveliness and swift decay. And O ye holy women, who at Delphi Roused from sleep the cradled Dionysius, Who with an April eye Looked up at them, Before the adorable god, the infant Jesus, Was found at Bethlehem!