I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body’s weight upon my breast: So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again. IV-XIX WHAT LIPS MY LIPS HAVE KISSED What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more. IV-XX STILL WILL I HARVEST BEAUTY Still will I harvest beauty where it grows: In coloured fungus and the spotted fog Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows Of rust and oil, where half a city throws Its empty tins; and in some spongy log Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog. . . . And a black pupil in the green scum shows. Her the inhabiter of divers places Surmising at all doors, I push them all. Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge Turn back forevermore with craven faces, I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl! IV-XXI HOW HEALTHILY THEIR FEET How healthily their feet upon the floor Strike down! These are no spirits, but a band Of children, surely, leaping hand in hand, Into the air in groups of three and four, Wearing their silken rags as if they wore Leaves only and light grasses, or a strand Of black elusive seaweed oozing sand, And running hard as if along a shore. I know how lost forever, and at length How still these lovely tossing limbs shall lie, And the bright laughter and the panting breath; And yet, before such beauty and such strength, Once more, as always when the dance is high, I am rebuked that I believe in death. IV-XXII EUCLID ALONE HAS LOOKED