Hermaphrodite

Rosy and naked, pure as a flower divine,
The mystic being of old stories sleeps,
Stretched in the grass like a bough of eglantine,
In the flowery clearing in the forest deeps.

Upon his folded arm he rests his head;
The sleeping kisses of the sun repose
Upon his delicate body softly spread,
And shimmer from his shoulders to his toes.

And near him, with a murmur as of bees,
Runs the clear brook through grass and lily flowers,
Under the fig-trees' laden boughs, and flees,
Winding along the tangled secret bowers.

Sweet sorcery of the flesh! A sphinx above thee
Asks the thrilled senses to resolve desires!
With shame and terror tremble all who love thee,
And they who see thee burn with thousand fires.

Seeing thy more than human loveliness
Women and youths their envious glances dart;
They sigh with lowered eyes, and weep, and press
Sometimes their hand upon their maddened heart.

"Where is the heavenly goddess," so they cry,
"Whose loveliness can match thy perfect frame?
And what young god, all sun and spring, can vie
With all this freshness blent with tender flame?"

O to drink madly on one mouth the kisses
Of Aphrodite and Adonis both,
And, trembling, to discover all blent blisses
In the same frame to no perversions loth!

Faust had left Margaret for thee, and lewd
Anacreon had never lost a day on
Bathyllus, Sappho would not have pursued
In her escape Erinna, no nor Phaon.

Under thy foot earth lapped with pallid flames
Trembles, and all the flowers die where it hovers
Man clips no more the woman, and hot dames
Enlace their arms no more around young lover

O last ideal of decaying races,
Mortal revealer of best beauties, thy
Poisons poured lavishly in thine embraces
Have made the ancient cities rot and die.

And now to us thou comest, while uncloses
Under thy feet a dawn that pales the day's;
And poets, mad with incense and with roses,
Laud thee with chants of glory, love, and praise.

Sweet being, grant to us thy sweetest blisses!
We drag ourselves under thy conquering feet,
While, in a downy drunkenness, thy kisses
Gather our last and loveliest heart's beat.