My beloved is the prow of my spirit plunging through the billowing blue of the morning,
There is a sea-song in our on-going, and a wind-song in our sails:
Our sails are glittering wings, our ship is a bird rising from the running seas,
We have a sky, we have a sky for soaring and singing,
Earth sparkles beneath us in September glory,
And near the sun we pour our golden love-song upon the planet . .

Fling your lasso of light curling about our heads,
Morning-fire,
Smite with your spears of gold the pulse of our hearts,
Strike sun-up song from our souls, that arising with kisses
We become the crown of life,
A young garland of the Earth.

Come, let us take our breakfast in the city where the people dwell in darkness,
Let the brook-babble of a continuous musical laughter be soft between us,
Let us veil our eyes from each other and guard our lips,
Let us seem sane and practical in the wild morning-weather,
Let not the heaven of glory within us be manifest before the people,
Let them not see the sky where we soar together ...
Lest we be taken, lest we be confined, lest we be put away,
Lest we be arrested for lunacy ...

This is love's proof:
That it is more wonderful to be together, than to be parted:
That distance does not touch each other with a glamour
Half so beautiful as the witchery of nearness:
That the hours together go all too soon, too soon:
That morning trips on the heels of evening, and the dark is juggled with the light:
That we never have time enough to say all the things that we must say:
That parting makes us aware of hunger and desire:
That the thousandth touch of lips has the fine intoxication of the first:

Forget yourself into a child,
And let me be the cradling arms
Of far away and long ago ...
Lay away trouble and pain, lay them away,
Lay them on me, my own,
And give your soul into mine.

Come from many troubles into peace,
Come from tired travel into rest ...
Float away on the waters of melodious mothering silence,
Down to the sea of sleep,
Down to the Deep of Dreams.

Are you in my arms, my bird,
Are you here? are you here, in the hollow beside my cheek?
Slender Pocahontas was your great-great-grandmother,
The pines and the waters soothed her into slumber,
Soothed her, caressed her, and murmured her asleep ...

Let me be the pines and the waters,
And the dark, the summer Earth,
Let me be caressing South-Wind
Starry and melodious ...
Let me gather you, let me be your enfolding into a nest,
Let me be the waters where you slip to the dark and cease,
Cease from care and trouble, darling, and come to rest,

My love is a winged heart ...
O dark depths of my ghost whence, throbbing, she flies
Out and up to the heavens on the golden thread of my love ...

My love is a winged heart ...
And I draw in the golden thread, I draw it in quickly,
Lest she be flown, lest she be quite vanished ...

My love is a winged heart ...
Singing, she drops in my hands, and I put her warm in my breast ...
Surely I should die if she never returned.

Listen, dear Golden Bird ...
When I was a tiny fellow, when I was nine years old,
Some wonder slipped from my spirit, and was lost, was lost ...
But far-off on the Earth, O Golden Bird, you were born ...

Long dark years were mine ... dust of struggle and toil ...
And I ran through the cities seeking, and looking at the beautiful faces ...
Was this the wonder? was this? or was it a pine, a sea-wave,
Or was it a song, a star?

My music jangled in my throat, aching for the wonder,

You are mine ... you are mine ... you are mine ...
This is my fierce chant at night,
This is my savage cry.

Naked, you are mine,
And all in the sweet wonder of clothes, you are mine ...
I take you with a rough tenderness: I own you:
I devour your beauty and your body and the wild lights of your star-soul ...
You are woman, a man's morsel ...

And you moan with delight to be enslaved, to be owned, to be devoured ...
You pass into me, flame and incense of the ancient sacrifice,

And when I heard that voice
Which seemed like the ghost of a wisp of bemooned vapour,
Like the echo of the starlight,
Like twined laughter and yearning descending through a phantom of sorrow,
And which was love in pain before a god and a child in the beloved's soul,
Then there was no other music for me, no, none other,
And my soul, shut from her soul, forever, forever,
Must hunt forever the mystery where that music hides ...

And when that song, like the drip of honey in a dream,
Is mine in a quick moment of shaken chance,