Ode on Beauty.

    Infinite peace is hanging in the air,
        Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,
    That just an hour ago learnt how to bear
        Seeing your body's flaming harmonies.
    The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,
        Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,
            And all the earth goes slowly into night,
            Steadily turning from the harshly bright
    Sunset.    And now the wind is growing cold
        And in my heart a hidden voice is calling.

    Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earth
        When lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,
    When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birth
        And all our pulses, both our bodies sing?
    When through the haze that gathers on my sight
        I see your eyelids, know the eyes behind
            See me and half not see me, when our blood
            Goes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,
    Calm and terrific in unhasty might,
        Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?

    Or could it be that when our blood was colder
        And side by side we sat with lips disparted
    I saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,
        Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,
    More splendid joy?    Ah poignant joys all these!
        And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.
            Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to see
            Your honey-coloured hair move languorously,
    Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,
        And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.

    Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous air
        And knelt to gods I knew not, to remove
    The viewless hands whose sight I could not bear
        Out of the wind-blown head of her I love.
    Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,
        Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyes
            And sends through all my veins a dim despair
            Of never apprehending all so fair
    And I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,
        Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.

    Ah no!    This joy is empty, incomplete,
        And sullied with a sense of too much longing,
    Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,
        And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.
    Man can see beauty for a moment's space
        And live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,
            If all his body and all his soul in one
            Instant are tuned by passion to unison
    And I can image in your kissing face
        The eternal meaning of the earth and sky.