I would drink of the honeyed wine that is heavy with poppies
Until my trembling eyelids close, and only the murmur
Of Life I should know: as the murmur of seas to one sleeping.
Glide now the soft, slim feet
Of white dreams that are lovely and fugitive
To whom thy sorrow is alien, my beloved!
Sweetly their feet stir the young grasses, they lie coiled
In clear dark waters, or couched in the thickets,
Their whiteness dappled with shadow,
So might I forget again the sword of thy beauty
And the desire that looked out from thine eyes, until mine heart leapt
Forth to meet it, and was seared in the flame.
Life was as a net about me, and mine hands might not rend it,
But I lay in fear among the toils, and afar
Mine ears strained to catch the footsteps of the hunter.
Honey and poppies!
Until desire is drowned within me, until sleep
Hath builded a world that is gateless,
A world of beautiful luminous waters
Through which the white dreams slip and swim,
Pearled with fine spray, their bright hair floating,
To whom love and desire and sorrow are foolishness
And thy beauty a shadow, that the wind breaketh.
And thy body but dust for the wind’s pasture
And thy sorrow but a murmur of waters....
There are they, the exultant, the swan-throated;
Through the night cometh the sound of their trumpets,
Until mine heart is drunken with their wine.
Honey and poppies!
Until sleep is heavy upon me as a garment,
Until the winged joys come.
But even then, O my beloved! is desire and a grieving;
Even in the deep waters my soul remembereth
How it hath been troubled by thy hands.