MADELEINE


          OH, the cool white neck of her:
            The ivory column: oh, the velvet skin.
          Little I reck of her
            Save the curve from breast to chin.
          Oh, the rising rounded throat,
          Pain's subtle antidote.
          To sit and watch the pulses of it beat,
          And guess the passionate heat
            Of the blood that flows within!
          I see it swelling with her even breath
            And long to make it throb
            With a love as strong as death,
          To cause the sharp and sudden-catching sob
            And the swift dark flood,
            Showing the instant blood,
          Quick mantling up where I had made it throb
            With love as strong as death.

          Oh, the pure, pale face of her;
            The chiselled outline, chaste as starlit snows.
          The ineffable grace of her;
            The distant, perfect grace of her repose.
            Her mouth the waiting redness of a rose;  129}
            A rose too nearly cloyed
            With its own secret sweetness unalloyed:
          That waits in scented silence, stately-sad,
            Wed to a guarded passion thro' long days,
          But lifts the proud head, saying "I am glad,"
            Haughty receives as due the word of praise,
          And flings her perfumed wonders on the air:
          "Afar," she says, "fall down and gaze; for I am fair."

          Oh the dark, sweet hair of her,
            Burnished cascade of heavy-tress�d black:
          Nothing's more rare of her
            Than its thick massed glory over breast and back.
          It rolls and ripples, silver flecked,
            Like moonlight on a misty sea,
          Whose lifting surfaces reflect
            A sombre, ever-changing radiancy.
          I would compare
          The dusk, soft-stealing perfume of her hair
            To breezes on a Southern Summer eve,
          When the night-scented stock hangs drowsing on the air.
            Its languid incense bids me half believe
          I pass the dreamy day in reveries,
          By some sleep-haunted shore of the Hesperides.

          Oh, the deep, dark eyes of her,
            Half slumbrous depths of heavy lidded calm:
          There's naught I prize of her
            More than the shrouded silence they embalm.
          There's all the mystery of an enchanted pool,
          Hid in brown woodlands cool;     {130}
          Profound, untroubled, where the lilies grow
            And the pale lotus sheds her stealing charm:
          Dappled where silent shadows come and go,
            And all the air is warm
          With the low melody of the Sacred Bird
            Sobbing his soul out to the waiting wood,
          And over all a hush�d voice is heard:
            This place is consecrate to Love in solitude.

                                        ARTHUR F. GRIMBLE










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