Ay, for there it is, love—­that’s the deepest. 
Love’s not love in the dark. 
Light loves wither i’ the sun, but Love endureth,
Clothing himself with the light as with a robe.

I would bare my soul to thy sight—­
Leave not a secret deep unsearched,
Unrevealing its shame or its glory. 
Love without Truth shall die as a soul without God. 
A lying love is the love of a day
But the brave and true shall love forever.

Build Love a house;
Let the walls be thick;
Shut him in from the sight of men;
But hide not Love from himself.

Ah, the summer night! 
The wind in the trees and the moonlight! 
And my kisses on thy throat
And thy breathing in my hair!

Silent, lips to lips! 
But our souls have held speech, thought answering echoing thought,
Though the only words were kisses.

THE BATHER.

I saw him go down to the water to bathe;
He stood naked upon the bank.

His breast was like a white cloud in the heaven,
     that catches the sun;
It swelled with the sharp joy of the air.

His legs rose with the spring and curve of young birches;
The hollow of his back caught the blue shadows: 

With his head thrown up to the lips of the wind;
And the curls of his forehead astir with the wind.

I would that I were a man, they are so beautiful;
Their bodies are like the bows of the Indians;
They have the spring and the grace of bows of hickory.

I know that women are beautiful, and that I am beautiful;
But the beauty of a man is so lithe and alive and triumphant,
Swift as the night of a swallow and sure as the
     pounce of the eagle.

NOCTURNE:  IN ANJOU.

I dreamed of Sappho on a summer night. 
Her nightingales were singing in the trees
Beside the castled river; and the wind
Fell like a woman’s fingers on my cheek. 
And then I slept and dreamed and marked no change;
The night went on with me into my dream. 
This only I remember, that I cried: 
“O Sappho! ere I leave this paradise,
Sing me one song of those lost books of yours
For which we poets still go sorrowing;
That when I meet my fellows on the earth
I may rejoice them more than many pearls;”
And she, the sweetly smiling, answered me,
As one who dreams, “I have forgotten them.”

NOCTURNE:  IN PROVENCE.

The blue night, like an angel, came into the room,—­
Came through the open window from the silent sky
Down trellised stairs of moonlight into the dear room
As if a whisper breathed of some divine one nigh. 
The nightingales, like brooks of song in Paradise,
Gurgled their serene rapture to the silent sky—­
Like springs of laughter bubbling up in Paradise,
The serene nightingales along the riverside
Purled low in every tree their star-cool melodies
Of joy—­in every tree along the riverside.