Portrait of a Lady

The crocodile has lost its skin
To shoe your feet;
Crossed, pointed, variegated, arched,
They let no love dart in;
And your gloved, armoured hands
Set the brain burning like a blood-red Sun
On lawn-smooth lands.

The Moon has lost its light
To your wan face.
Night's fishing fleets, the stars,
Dragged Time for aeons ere they found those eyes.
Antique fires drowsed in many a waveless gem
Now on your snowy skin
Flicker agen.

Worms pale as skies of milk
On China's hills
Filled Time with coloured clouds;
Draw them about your limbs,
And you have drawn
From slumbering sense the lovely snowy hills
Of milkwhite Dawn.

Time carved your voice from water,
Its running chime
Rang cold age-long.
Trees budded to its tinkling silver stream
Ere it grew warm,
And charmed the souls of men who lay like rocks
Buried in calm.

Now in their flesh recumbent,
Burning they gaze
On you gloved, robed, enamelled like a flower,
Cool and as unafraid.
Your perfect dress
Preserves your beauty to the burning brain's
Far-off caress.

On lawn-smooth lands
Among neat-bordered and trimmed shapely plants
A perfect O,
A blood-red Sun of wild tumultuous fire
Hangs o'er the garden where its graven flames
Smooth, violent, cool, invulnerable as you,
As marble, glow.