Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent

Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…

Silver dust lifted from the earth, higher than my arms reach, you have mounted. O silver,

NOR skin nor hide nor fleece Shall cover you, Nor curtain of crimson nor fine Shelter of cedar—wood be over you, Nor the fir—tree

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;

Hymen, O Hymen king, what bitter thing is this? what shaft, tearing my heart? what scar, what light, what fire searing my eye—balls and my eyes w…

Thou art come at length More beautiful Than any cool god In a chamber under Lycia’s far coast,

Bear me to Dictaeus, and to the steep slopes; to the river Erymanthus. I choose spray of dittany, cyperum, frail of flower,

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

I first tasted under Apollo’s lip… love and love sweetness, I, Evadne; my hair is made of crisp violets or hyacinth which the wind combs b…

Can we believe—by an effort comfort our hearts: it is not waste all this, not placed here in disgust, street after street,

I should have thought in a dream you would have brought some lovely, perilous thing, orchids piled in a great sheath, as who would say (in a dream),