If I should take dark rings of hair,
Soft wind them round your forehead,
Would a dark vein stand
And throb to my tender touching?
Eyes of pain have beheld you,
Cornered in dark, walled height;
Now, you gaze back dumbly,
Pained in a dark vein's frenzy;
Lips parted through the half-light,
Pale hair down, glistening.
And it is I who lean back
With half-smile and quiet acceptance,
Receiving your timidity, knowing
Its growth to present dart-kisses.

Once my desire, like a river,
Raced and fell among the jagged heights of joy,
Now sparkled with the sun, now in the seeming dark
Of the shadow of the o'erhanging tree,
Rushing, racing, always, madly. . .

But new no longer hurrying—
Flowing slowly, softly in this sadness
Reflecting the grey, unchanging sky
It winds across the flat and greenless plains
Of hopelessness, directionless
With no end but a sea of nothingness.