102
ANGELIQUE
He posed for her at evening in the pines,
Bathed in a purifying flood of moonlight,—
Moonlight that draped him in a spotless robe,
And put upon his pallid face the look
Of an acolyte before a glowing candle.
More beautiful he was in lonely night,
When rippling his fingers on his cedar flute,
He stirred to life within a woman's breast
A nameless poignant yearning, the wistful will
To mother something, someone—a bird, a fawn,
An acolyte before a glowing candle.
And when at last, with patch of open throat
Silverly throbbing like a mating thrush's,
He poured his torrential ardor in a song
That dripped the melancholy of his hunger—
Oh, never a thing of throbbing human flesh
Could long withstand the beat and break of it!
Never a woman but would yield a moan,
And clutching at her breast with trembling hands,
Sink down upon the earth.
Bathed in a purifying flood of moonlight,—
Moonlight that draped him in a spotless robe,
And put upon his pallid face the look
Of an acolyte before a glowing candle.
More beautiful he was in lonely night,
When rippling his fingers on his cedar flute,
He stirred to life within a woman's breast
A nameless poignant yearning, the wistful will
To mother something, someone—a bird, a fawn,
An acolyte before a glowing candle.
And when at last, with patch of open throat
Silverly throbbing like a mating thrush's,
He poured his torrential ardor in a song
That dripped the melancholy of his hunger—
Oh, never a thing of throbbing human flesh
Could long withstand the beat and break of it!
Never a woman but would yield a moan,
And clutching at her breast with trembling hands,
Sink down upon the earth.
So Angelique!—
As when a wild goose plum, mature for harvest,
Shaken among the leaves by a flitting thrush,
Lets loose its tenuous hold upon the twig
And drops to earth, a windfall for the world.
As when a wild goose plum, mature for harvest,
Shaken among the leaves by a flitting thrush,
Lets loose its tenuous hold upon the twig
And drops to earth, a windfall for the world.
