Well shaped the breasts and smooth the skin,
  The cheeks are fair, the tresses free;
And yet I shall not suffer death,
  God over me.

Those even brows, that hair like gold,
  Those languorous tones, that virgin way;
The flowing limbs, the rounded heel
  Slight men betray.

Thy spirit keen through radiant mien,
  Thy shining throat and smiling eye,
Thy little palm, thy side like foam—­
  I cannot die.

O woman, shapely as the swan,
  In a cunning house hard-reared was I;
O bosom white, O well-shaped palm,
  I shall not die.

AN IDYLL

You stay at last at my bosom, with your beauty
  young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the
  foal’s that follows the mare,
Brow fair and young and stately where thought
  has now begun—­Hair
bright as the breast of the eagle when he
  strains up to the sun!

In the space of a broken castle I found you on
  a day
When the call of the new-come cuckoo went
  with me all the way. 
You stood by the loosened stones that were
  rough and black with age: 
The fawn beloved of the hunter in the panther’s
  broken cage!

And we went down together by paths your
  childhood knew—­
Remote you went beside me, like the spirit of
  the dew;
Hard were the hedge-rows still:  sloe-bloom
  was their scanty dower—­
You slipped it within your bosom, the bloom
  that scarce is flower.

And now you stay at my bosom with you
  beauty young and rare,
Though your light limbs are as limber as the
  foal’s that follows the mare;
But always I will see you on paths your childhood
  knew,
When remote you went beside me like the
  spirit of the dew.

CHRIST THE COMRADE

Christ, by thine own darkened hour
  Live within my heart and brain! 
  Let my hands not slip the rein.

Ah, how long ago it is
  Since a comrade rode with me! 
  Now a moment let me see

Thyself, lonely in the dark,
Perfect, without wound or mark.

ARAB SONGS (I)

Saadi the Poet stood up and he put forth his
  living words. 
His songs were the hurtling of spears and
  his figures the flashing of swords. 
With hearts dilated our tribe saw the creature
  of Saadi’s mind;
It was like to the horse of a king, a creature
  of fire and of wind.

Umimah my loved one was by me:  without
  love did these eyes see my fawn,
And if fire there were in her being, for me
  its splendour had gone;
When the sun storms up on the tent, he makes
  waste the fire of the grass—­
It was thus with my loved one’s beauty:  the
  splendour of song made it pass.

The desert, the march, and the onset—­these
  and these only avail,
Hands hard with the handling of spear-shafts,
  brows white with the press of the mail! 
And as for the kisses of women—­these are
  honey, the poet sings;
But the honey of kisses, beloved, it is lime
  for the spirit’s wings.