Love
Deep in the moving depths
Of yellow wine,
I swore I’d drown your face,
O love of mine;
All clad in yellow hue,
So fair to see,
You crouched within my cup
And laughed at me.
Twice o’er a learned page
I turned and tossed,
For would I not forget
The love I lost?
All stern and robed in gloom,
You read it too;
I could not see the words—
Saw only you.
Within the hungry chase
I thought to kill
You, love, who haunted thus
Without my will;
But in the gentle gaze
Of fawn and deer,
Your eyes disarmed my hand,
And shook my spear.
Beneath a maid’s dark lash
I swore you’d drown,
Sink in the laughing blue—
Give in, go down
But no! you bathèd there
Right joyously,
And from her liquid eyes
You laughed at me.
