Page:Poems and Baudelaire Flowers.djvu/16

Of this you and this shrine of yours
That I cannot tell from you,
This complicate thing that lures
My being and thrills me through

With hopes and longings and lusts,
Tumults of body and mind,
A medley of pulls and thrusts
Unnumbered and undefined.

A medley they are, but I learn them
On the summits of thought and dream
As parts of a whole, and discern them
One Love though many they seem:

The Love that gloats on the swell
Of your breast all ripe for its fang,
The Love that would suffer a hell
To save you a passing pang,

The Love with throb and sting
At whose waking my loins are stirred,
The Love that would make me fling
From a cliff-top at your word. . . . .

On a sudden I break my thought
With a little laugh, and turn
As a dutiful lover ought
To fanning your cheeks that burn,

And smoothing your tangled hair
From your forehead, strand by strand,
With such a caressing care
That you needs must draw back my hand