Dead on her heart her crimsoned flower of Spring. 
     These, the irreverent of Life’s design,
     Division between natural and divine
     Would cast; these vaunting barrenness for best,
     In veins of gathered strength Life’s tide arrest;
     And these because the roses flood their cheeks,
     Vow them in nature wise as when Love speaks. 
     With them is war; and well the Goddess knows
     What undermines the race who mount the rose;
     How the ripe moment, lodged in slumberous hours,
     Enkindled by persuasion overpowers: 
     Why weak as are her frailer trailing weeds,
     The strong when Beauty gleams o’er Nature’s needs,
     And timely guile unguarded finds them lie. 
     They who her sway withstand a sea defy,
     At every point of juncture must be proof;
     Nor look for mercy from the incessant surge
     Her forces mixed of craft and passion urge
     For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. 
     She, tenderness, is pitiless to them
     Resisting in her godhead nature’s truth. 
     No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem;
     Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. 
     These miserably disinclined,
     The lamentably unembraced,
     Insult the Pleasures Earth designed
     To people and beflower the waste. 
     Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: 
     For death they live, in life they die.

     Her head the Goddess from them turns,
     As from grey mounds of ashes in bronze urns. 
     She views her quivering couples unconsoled,
     And of her beauty mirror they become,
     Like orchard blossoms, apple, pear and plum,
     Free of the cloud, beneath the flood of gold. 
     Crowned with wreaths that burn in dew,
     Her couples whirl, sun-satiated,
     Athirst for shade, they sigh, they wed,
     They play the music made of two: 
     Oldest of earth, earth’s youngest till earth’s end: 
     Cunninger than the numbered strings,
     For melodies, for harmonies,
     For mastered discords, and the things
     Not vocable, whose mysteries
     Are inmost Love’s, Life’s reach of Life extend.

     Is it an anguish overflowing shame
     And the tongue’s pudency confides to her,
     With eyes of embers, breath of incense myrrh,
     The woman’s marrow in some dear youth’s name,
     Then is the Goddess tenderness
     Maternal, and she has a sister’s tones
     Benign to soothe intemperate distress,
     Divide despair from hope, and sighs from moans. 
     Her gentleness imparts exhaling ease
     To those of her milk-bearer votaries
     As warm of bosom-earth as she; of the source
     Direct; erratic but in heart’s excess;
     Being mortal and ill-matched for Love’s great force;
     Like green leaves caught with flames by his impress. 
     And pray they under skies less overcast,
     That swiftly may her star of eve descend,
     Her lustrous morning star fly not too fast,
     To lengthen blissful night will she befriend.