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…

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

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?

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;

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain, treasure

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…

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

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

YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

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…

Weed, moss—weed, root tangled in sand, sea—iris, brittle flower, one petal like a shell is broken,

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone

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,