gold, with an innermost speck

of silver, singing afloat

beneath the night,

like balls of thistle-down

wandering up and down

over the whispering town

seeking where to alight!

slowly, above the street

above the ebb of feet

drifting in flight;

still, in the purple distance

the gold of their strange persistence

as they cross and part and meet

and pass out of sight!

the seed-ball of the sun

is broken at last, and done

is the orb of day.

now to the separate ends

seed after day-seed wends

a separate way.

no sun will ever rise

again on the wonted skies

in the midst of the spheres.

the globe of the day, over-ripe,

is shattered at last beneath the stripe

of the wind, and its oneness veers

out myriad-wise.

seed after seed after seed

drifts over the town, in its need

to sink and have done;

to settle at last in the dark,

to bury its weary spark

where the end is begun.

darkness, and depth of sleep,

nothing to know or to weep

where the seed sinks in

to the earth of the under-night

where all is silent, quite

still, and the darknesses steep

out all the sin.

"she said as well to me"

she said as well to me: "why are you ashamed?

that little bit of your chest that shows between

the gap of your shirt, why cover it up?

why shouldn't your legs and your good strong

thighs

be rough and hairy?—i'm glad they are like

that.

you are shy, you silly, you silly shy thing.

men are the shyest creatures, they never will come

out of their covers. like any snake

slipping into its bed of dead leaves, you hurry into

your clothes.

and i love you so! straight and clean and all of a

piece is the body of a man,

such an instrument, a spade, like a spear, or an

oar,

such a joy to me—"

so she laid her hands and pressed them down my

sides,

so that i began to wonder over myself, and what i

was.

she said to me: "what an instrument, your

body!

single and perfectly distinct from everything else!

what a tool in the hands of the lord!

only god could have brought it to its shape.

it feels as if his handgrasp, wearing you

had polished you and hollowed you,

hollowed this groove in your sides, grasped you

under the breasts

and brought you to the very quick of your form,

subtler than an old, soft-worn fiddle-bow.

"when i was a child, i loved my father's riding-

whip

that he used so often.

i loved to handle it, it seemed like a near part of

him.

so i did his pens, and the jasper seal on his desk.

something seemed to surge through me when i

touched them.

"so it is with you, but here

the joy i feel!

god knows what i feel, but it is joy!

look, you are clean and fine and singled out!

i admire you so, you are beautiful: this clean

sweep of your sides, this firmness, this hard

mould!

i would die rather than have it injured with one

scar.

i wish i could grip you like the fist of the lord,

and have you—"

so she said, and i wondered,

feeling trammelled and hurt.

it did not make me free.

now i say to her: "no tool, no instrument, no

god!

don't touch me and appreciate me.

it is an infamy.

you would think twice before you touched a

weasel on a fence

as it lifts its straight white throat.

your hand would not be so flig and easy.

nor the adder we saw asleep with her head on her

shoulder,

curled up in the sunshine like a princess;

when she lifted her head in delicate, startled

wonder

you did not stretch forward to caress her

though she looked rarely beautiful

and a miracle as she glided delicately away, with

such dignity.

and the young bull in the field, with his wrinkled,

sad face,

you are afraid if he rises to his feet,

though he is all wistful and pathetic, like a mono-

lith, arrested, static.

"is there nothing in me to make you hesitate?

i tell you there is all these.

and why should you overlook them in me?—"