I
Ah, you
stack of white lilies, all white and gold,
A am adrift as a sunbeam, and
without form
Or
having, save I light on you to warm
Your pallor into radiance, flush your
cold
White beauty into incandescence: you
Are not a stack of white lilies
tonight, but a white
And clustered star transfigured by me tonight,
And lighting these ruddy leaves
like a star dropped through
The slender bare arms of the branches, your
tire-maidens
Who
lift swart arms to fend me off; but I come
Like a wind of fire upon you,
like to some
Stray
whitebeam who on you his fire unladens.
And you are a glistening toadstool shining
here
Among the
crumpled beech-leaves phosphorescent,
My stack of white lilies burning
incandescent
Of me,
a soft white star among the leaves, my dear.
II
Is it with pain, my dear, that you shudder
so?
Is it because I
have hurt you with pain, my dear?
Did I shiver? — Nay, truly I did not know —
A dewdrop may-be splashed on my face down
here.
Why even now you speak through close-shut
teeth,
I have been
too much for you — Ah, I remember!
The ground is a little chilly underneath
The leaves — and, dear, you
consume me all to an ember.
You hold yourself all hard as if my kisses
Hurt as I gave them — you put
me away —
Ah never I put you away: yet each kiss
hisses
Hot as a drop
of fire wastes me away.
III
I am ashamed, you wanted me not to-night
—
Nay, it is always so, you sigh with me.
Your radiance dims when I draw
too near, and my free
Fire enters your petals like death, you wilt
dead white.
Ah, I do know, and I am deep ashamed;
You love me while I hover
tenderly
Like
clinging sunbeams kissing you: but see
When I close in fire upon you, and you are
flamed
With the swiftest fire of my love, you are
destroyed.
‘Tis a
degradation deep to me, that my best
Soul’s whitest lightning which should bright
attest
God stepping
down to earth in one white stride,
Means only to you a clogged, numb burden of
flesh
Heavy to bear,
even heavy to uprear
Again from earth, like lilies wilted and sere
Flagged on the floor, that
before stood up so fresh.