ever intimate
     In breast, and doth as ready handmaid wait,
     Until perverted by her senseless male,
     She plays the winding snake, the shrinking snail,
     The flying deer, all tricks of evil fame,
     Elusive to allure, since he grew tame.

     Hence has the Goddess, Nature’s earliest Power,
     And greatest and most present, with her dower
     Of the transcendent beauty, gained repute
     For meditated guile.  She laughs to hear
     A charge her garden’s labyrinths scarce confute,
     Her garden’s histories tell of to all near. 
     Let it be said, But less upon her guile
     Doth she rely for her immortal smile. 
     Still let the rumour spread, and terror screens
     To push her conquests by the simplest means. 
     While man abjures not lustihead, nor swerves
     From earth’s good labours, Beauty’s Queen he serves.

     Her spacious garden and her garden’s grant
     She offers in reward for handsome cheer: 
     Choice of the nymphs whose looks will slant
     The secret down a dewy leer
     Of corner eyelids into haze: 
     Many a fair Aphrosyne
     Like flower-bell to honey-bee: 
     And here they flicker round the maze
     Bewildering him in heart and head: 
     And here they wear the close demure,
     With subtle peeps to reassure: 
     Others parade where love has bled,
     And of its crimson weave their mesh: 
     Others to snap of fingers leap,
     As bearing breast with love asleep. 
     These are her laughters in the flesh. 
     Or would she fit a warrior mood,
     She lights her seeming unsubdued,
     And indicates the fortress-key. 
     Or is it heart for heart that craves,
     She flecks along a run of waves
     The one to promise deeper sea.

     Bands of her limpid primitives,
     Or patterned in the curious braid,
     Are the blest man’s; and whatsoever he gives,
     For what he gives is he repaid. 
     Good is it if by him ’tis held
     He wins the fairest ever welled
     From Nature’s founts:  she whispers it:  Even I
     Not fairer! and forbids him to deny,
     Else little is he lover.  Those he clasps,
     Intent as tempest, worshipful as prayer, —
     And be they doves or be they asps, —
     Must seem to him the sovereignty fair;
     Else counts he soon among life’s wholly tamed. 
     Him whom from utter savage she reclaimed,
     Half savage must he stay, would he be crowned
     The lover.  Else, past ripeness, deathward bound,
     He reasons; and the totterer Earth detests,
     Love shuns, grim logic screws in grasp, is he. 
     Doth man divide divine Necessity
     From Joy, between the Queen of Beauty’s breasts
     A sword is driven; for those most glorious twain
     Present her; armed to bless and to constrain.