Ah, the night! The eyes!
You are white beneath the plum-blossoms,
As an oread beneath the shadow
Of flowering branches: immobile,
Among things fugitive and frail.
For God hath filled you with the memory
Of things forgotten by man; and your eyelids
Close upon lost splendours.
Yea! They are heavy with the secrets of time;
Troubled by the strangeness of beauty.
But mine heart knoweth the secret
Of your subtile lips and eyes: the silence
Wherein throng presently, with maddening cymbals,
With bright-tressed torches, the maenads,
Their cool flesh wreathed with dark vines.
Ah, the night! The eyes!
Honey pale are you, pallid as ivory:
An amber grape, whose sweetness will be wine
On some king's lip!
Here‘ mid these golds and purples,
These dusked magnificences,
Amid strange faces
Only your face against the plum-blossom
Know I: remembering
Bright spear heads in the moonlight
By the still tents, the red embers,
The strings and flutes of pain....
And again the weariness of desiring.
Ah, the night! The eyes!