LOVE AND SLEEP
by: Algernon Charles Swinburne
(1837-1909)
- YING asleep
between the strokes of night
- I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
- Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
- Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
- Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
- But perfect-coloured without white or red.
- And her lips opened amorously, and said--
- I wist not what, saving one word--Delight
- And all her face was honey to my mouth,
- And all her body pasture to mine eyes;
- The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
- The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
- The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
- And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire.
"Love and Sleep" is reprinted
from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New York: Crown
Publishers, 1921. |
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