Classic Poem

To you, going or coming, O woman, I pass the key of love:
Take it: it will open all doors: go where you choose:
I put no bounds on the privilege of love.
I do not make you pretty speeches or flatter you with lying poems:
I may be rather brusque with you and you may not like my manners at all.
That wont hurt: the chief thing is subserved: I like you: I bequeath freedom to you.
And that, it seems to me, is better than all the humbug rhynies of poets,
And that, it seems to me, is more honor to woman than any amount of verbal adoration—
And maybe has more art in its truth than the polishers of phrases would admit
I dont go down on my knees to you—I meet you face to face—
And the kisses of your dear lips are not goddess nectars to me but the precious gifts of a simple comrade.

There is that about you, O woman, which gives and takes life with prodigal unconcern:
You blossom and flower and give yourself to man and keep back nothing—
When you give you give all and you regret nothing that you give,
When you love you love all and you suspect nothing that you love,
And though a man is richer than all the planets because of what you bestow upon him,
He is poorer than twenty bankrupt nothings because of what you pay him as a tax
I will not go back on you, I mean exactly what I say:
It is easy to address deft speeches to you and amorous songs,
But I come to you when you call—come with my body, come with my soul,
And I let you alone when you reject me—in flesh and spirit let you alone
I dont want to lose you: I love you: but you will not stay:
I would not send you off, I would not hold you here:
What love cannot retain cannot be retained—must freely depart.
You go where your love goes: where else should you go?
And your sacred body so softly aloof to the touch goes where love goes: otherwise it goes to hell
You leave: my eyes follow you: yet I would not curb the impulse that leads you elsewhere:
If love cannot hold you here how could a legislature or a document hold you here?

Woman, I set you free:
I do not hold you by any bond,
No book put in the scales against you weighs an ounce,
Any custom quoted to scare you should be laughed at:
No father creed can stand in place of the child ideal.
They are afraid that if you go right—by love's right—the world will go wrong,
That if you live according to love something will happen to property and order
They call upon you to come back—to be like the rest:
To lie, conform, sell your body out for cash, like the rest, and be usual and genteel.
Now, if love has grown imperious I will make it reasonable again:
And the body, if it behaves badly to the soul, must be reminded of its place and not go beyond—
And the soul, if it behaves badly to the body, must be reminded of its place and not go beyond.

To you, going or coming, O woman:
A man can only say a few things to you and then be still—
A few man things which may fall short of the woman's mark:
But the man can say he loves and let you go,
And the man can help you to go as he irresistibly attracted you when you came,
And he can now efface himself and let love alone arbitrate the solemn issue,
And keep the stars out of the way and the sun and the ocean immensities to give you room to be free:
That is what I feel like saying to you, sternly, tenderly, without trying to be smart or ornamental:
To you, going or coming, O woman!