And the cunning of silken meshes where the heart's desire lies caught.

Over the azure expanses, on the offshore breezes borne,
I have sailed as a butterfly sails, nor recked where the impulse led,

Sufficed with the sunshine and freedom, the warmth and the summer morn,
The infinite glory surrounding, the infinite blue ahead.

La Nue
Oft when sweet music undulated round,

Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound

Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.
And in the country, leaf and flower and air

Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,

And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.
The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled

Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled

That thy voluptuous traits came glimmering through.
And in the city, dominant desire

For which men toil within its prison-bars,
I watched thy white feet moving in the mire

And thy white forehead hid among the stars.
Mystical, feminine, provoking, nude,

Radiant there with rosy arms outspread,
Sum of fulfillment, sovereign attitude,

Sensual with laughing lips and thrown-back head,
Draped in the rainbow on the summer hills,

Hidden in sea-mist down the hot coast-line,
Couched on the clouds that fiery sunset fills,

Blessed, remote, impersonal, divine;
The gold all color and grace are folded o'er,

The warmth all beauty and tenderness embower, --
Thou quiverest at Nature's perfumed core,

The pistil of a myriad-petalled flower.
Round thee revolves, illimitably wide,

The world's desire, as stars around their pole.
Round thee all earthlyloveliness beside

Is but the radiate, infinite aureole.
Thou art the poem on the cosmic page --

In rubric written on its golden ground --
That Nature paints her flowers and foliage

And rich-illumined commentary round.
Thou art the rose that the world's smiles and tears

Hover about like butterflies and bees.
Thou art the theme the music of the spheres

Echoes in endless, variant harmonies.
Thou art the idol in the altar-niche

Faced by Love's congregated worshippers,
Thou art the holy sacrament round which

The vast cathedral is the universe.
Thou art the secret in the crystal where,

For the last light upon the mystery Man,
In his lone tower and ultimate despair,

Searched the gray-bearded Zoroastrian.
And soft and warm as in the magic sphere,

Deep-orbed as in its erubescent fire,
So in my heart thine image would appear,

Curled round with the red flames of my desire.
All That's Not Love . . .

All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,

The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
The altar unset and the candle unlit.

Let me survive not the lovable sway
Of early desire, nor see when it goes

The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.

The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue

The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,
But even with their beauty life fades from them too.

No more would I linger past Love's ardent bounds
Nor live for aught else but the joy that it craves,

That, burden and essence of all that surrounds,
Is the song in the wind and the smile on the waves.

Paris
I

First, London, for its myriads; for its height,
Manhattan heaped in towering stalagmite;

But Paris for the smoothness of the paths
That lead the heart unto the heart's delight. . . .

Fair loiterer on the threshold of those days
When there's no lovelier prize the world displays

Than, having beauty and your twenty years,
You have the means to conquer and the ways,

And coming where the crossroads separate
And down each vista glories and wonders wait,

Crowning each path with pinnacles so fair
You know not which to choose, and hesitate --

Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom
Of some old quarter take a little room

That looks off over Paris and its towers
From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --

So high that you can hear a mating dove
Croon down the chimney from the roof above,

See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is
To wake between Our Lady and our love.

And have a little balcony to bring
Fair plants to fill with verdure and blossoming,

That sparrows seek, to feed from pretty hands,
And swallows circle over in the Spring.

There of an evening you shall sit at ease
In the sweet month of flowering chestnut-trees,

There with your little darling in your arms,
Your pretty dark-eyed Manon or Louise.

And looking out over the domes and towers
That chime the fleeting quarters and the hours,

While the bright clouds banked eastward back of them
Blush in the sunset, pink as hawthorn flowers,

You cannot fail to think, as I have done,
Some of life's ends attained, so you be one

Who measures life's attainment by the hours
That Joy has rescued from oblivion.

II
Come out into the evening streets. The green light lessens in the west.

The city laughs and liveliest her fervid pulse of pleasure beats.
The belfry on Saint Severin strikes eight across the smoking eaves:

Come out under the lights and leaves
to the Reine Blanche on Saint Germain. . . .

Now crowded diners fill the floor of brasserie and restaurant.
Shrill voices cry "L'Intransigeant," and corners echo "Paris-Sport."

Where rows of tables from the street are screened with shoots of box and bay,
The ragged minstrels sing and play and gather sous from those that eat.

And old men stand with menu-cards, inviting passers-by to dine
On the bright terraces that line the Latin Quarter boulevards. . . .

But, having drunk and eaten well, 'tis pleasant then to stroll along
And mingle with the merry throng that promenades on Saint Michel.

Here saunter types of every sort. The shoddy jostle with the chic:
Turk and Roumanian and Greek; student and officer and sport;

Slavs with their peasant, Christ-like heads,
and courtezans like powdered moths,

And peddlers from Algiers, with cloths
bright-hued and stitched with golden threads;

And painters with big, serious eyes go rapt in dreams, fantastic shapes
In corduroys and Spanish capes and locks uncut and flowing ties;