Shorn of attendant Graces she can use
     Her natural snares to make her will supreme. 
     A simple nymph it is, inclined to muse
     Before the leader foot shall dip in stream: 
     One arm at curve along a rounded thigh;
     Her firm new breasts each pointing its own way
     A knee half bent to shade its fellow shy,
     Where innocence, not nature, signals nay. 
     The bud of fresh virginity awaits
     The wooer, and all roseate will she burst: 
     She touches on the hour of happy mates;
     Still is she unaware she wakens thirst.

     And while commanding blissful sight believe
     It holds her as a body strained to breast,
     Down on the underworld’s perpetual eve
     She plunges the possessor dispossessed;
     And bids believe that image, heaving warm,
     Is lost to float like torch-smoke after flame;
     The phantom any breeze blows out of form;
     A thirst’s delusion, a defeated aim.

     The rapture shed the torture weaves;
     The direst blow on human heart she deals: 
     The pain to know the seen deceives;
     Nought true but what insufferably feels. 
     And stabs of her delicious note,
     That is as heavenly light to hearing, heard
     Through shelter leaves, the laughter from her throat,
     We answer as the midnight’s morning’s bird.

     She laughs, she wakens gleeful cries;
     In her delicious laughter part revealed;
     Yet mother is she more of moans and sighs,
     For longings unappeased and wounds unhealed. 
     Yet would she bless, it is her task to bless: 
     Yon folded couples, passing under shade,
     Are her rich harvest; bidden caress, caress,
     Consume the fruit in bloom; not disobeyed. 
     We dolorous complainers had a dream,
     Wrought on the vacant air from inner fire,
     We saw stand bare of her celestial beam
     The glorious Goddess, and we dared desire.

     Thereat are shown reproachful eyes, and lips
     Of upward curl to meanings half obscure;
     And glancing where a wood-nymph lightly skips
     She nods:  at once that creature wears her lure. 
     Blush of our being between birth and death: 
     Sob of our ripened blood for its next breath: 
     Her wily semblance nought of her denies;
     Seems it the Goddess runs, the Goddess hies,
     The generous Goddess yields.  And she can arm
     Her dwarfed and twisted with her secret charm;
     Benevolent as Earth to feed her own. 
     Fully shall they be fed, if they beseech. 
     But scorn she has for them that walk alone;
     Blanched men, starved women, whom no arts can pleach. 
     The men as chief of criminals she disdains,
     And holds the reason in perceptive thought. 
     More pitiable, like rivers lacking rains,
     Kissing cold stones,