Orpheus

Unripe, are blasted in the blossoming spring— This is a miracle, not the other thing! Nature insults herself, blasphemes her God, Thus cutting short the life’s hard happening. Nor would I suffer thus, nor she repine Had my wife faded (as rose-tinted wine Bleached in the sunlight) reached her period And fallen gently in the arms divine, Caressing arms of pale Persephone, And bathed her in death’s river tenderly, Washing the whole bright body, the long limbs, The clothing hair, the face, the witchery Of all the smiling shape in the dark stream, As one who gathers the first floral beam Of daylight by the water, dives and swims Deep in cool alleys, softer than a dream: So, rising to the other bank, aglow With the bright motion and the stream’s young flow, She might discover the Elysian ground, And find me waiting, find me sad and slow Pacing the green flower-lighted turf, and leap Into my body’s kisses, into sleep :— Sweeter this latter bridal than we found The first, now lost in time’s eternal deep. 127