ROSA COELI 
7 
 
Your hair was like a forest of tall pines 
In winter ;  black strange dwarfs with crooked spines 
And elfin eyes, and bleating mouths that worked 
All manner of grimace and bleak derision 
Bore them away ;  hollow-eyed ghosts that lurked 
About the sea made thereof masts ;  they fitted 
Tall ships and goodly, furrowing the deep 
To harvest merchandise ;  strong and keen-witted 
The mariners ;  oho !  the breezes leap 
Like lovers on them ;  lo !  they fared forth 
To South, East, West and North, 
Iceland, the Indies, Sicily, and Spain. . . . 
Lo !  men have heard of all these ships not one, not one for  
ever more again. 
 
VII 
Seeing your naked body in the bed 
Against the jetty silk, I thought you lay 
Just as the Milky Way 
Lies in the unkenned hollows of the sky. 
One swarthy ray of red 
Leapt from your hither eye, 
And straight my dream began 
To map that heaven—your eye, Aldeboran !   
I launched the magic boat, and early found 
The Pirate’s cave and the Enchaunted Ground ;   
The cedared Lebanon, 
The Wizard’s Grot, the well of spice, 
The Hanging Gardens of great Babylon :— 
All these then did I visit in a trice,