Poetica Erotica

Impenetrable pleasure dies Beneath the madness of new dreams; The slow sweet breath is turned to sighs More musical than many streams Under the moving silver beams, Fretted with stars, thrice woven across. White limbs in amorous slumber toss, Like sleeping foam, whose silver gleams On motionless dark seas; it seems As if some gentle spirit stirred. Their lazy brows with some swift word. So, in the secret of the shrine, Night keeps them nestled, so the gloom Laps them in waves as smooth as wine, As glowing as the fiery womb Of some young tigress, dark as doom, Andswift as sunrise. Love's content Builds its own monument, And carves above its vaulted tomb The Phoenix on her fiery plume, To their own souls to testify Their kisses’ immortality.