Slay with your eyes, Greek, men over the face of the earth, slay with your eyes, the host, puny, passionless, weak.

Break, as the ranks of steel broke of the Persian host: craven, we hated them then: now we would count them Gods beside these, spawn of the earth.

Grant us your mantle, Greek; grant us but one to fright (as your eyes) with a sword, men, craven and weak, grant us but one to strike one blow for you, passionate Greek.

You would have broken my wings, but the very fact that you knew I had wings, set some seal on my bitter heart, my heart broke and fluttered and sang.

You would have snared me, and scattered the strands of my nest; but the very fact that you saw, sheltered me, claimed me, set me apart from the rest.

Of men—of men made you a god, and me, claimed me, set me apart and the song in my breast, yours, yours forever— if I escape your evil heart.

I loved you: men have writ and women have said they loved, but as the Pythoness stands by the altar, intense and may not move;

till the fumes pass over; and may not falter nor break, till the priest has caught the words that mar or make a deme or a ravaged town;

so I, though my knees tremble, my heart break, must note the rumbling, heed only the shuddering down in the fissure beneath the rock of the temple floor;

must wait and watch and may not turn nor move, nor break from my trance to speak so slight, so sweet, so simple a word as love.

What had you done had you been true, I can not think, I may not know.

What could we do were I not wise, what play invent, what joy devise?

What could we do if you were great? (Yet were you lost, who were there, then, to circumvent the tricks of men?)

What can we do, for curious lies have filled your heart, and in my eyes sorrow has writ that I am wise.

If I had been a boy, I would have worshiped your grace, I would have flung my worship before your feet, I would have followed apart, glad, rent with an ecstasy to watch you turn your great head, set on the throat, thick, dark with its sinews, burned and wrought like the olive stalk, and the noble chin and the throat.

I would have stood, and watched and watched and burned, and when in the night, from the many hosts, your slaves, and warriors and serving men you had turned to the purple couch and the flame of the woman, tall like cypress tree that flames sudden and swift and free as with crackle of golden resin and cones and the locks flung free like the cypress limbs, bound, caught and shaken and loosed, bound, caught and riven and bound and loosened again, as in rain of a kingly storm or wind full from a desert plain.

So, when you had risen from all the lethargy of love and its heat, you would have summoned me, me alone, and found my hands, beyond all the hands in the world, cold, cold, cold, intolerably cold and sweet.

It was not chastity that made me cold nor fear, only I knew that you, like myself, were sick of the puny race that crawls and quibbles and lisps of love and love and lovers and love's deceit.

It was not chastity that made me wild but fear that my weapon, tempered in different heat, was over-matched by yours, and your hand skilled to yield death-blows, might break.

With the slightest turn—no ill-will meant— my own lesser, yet still somewhat fine-wrought fiery-tempered, delicate, over-passionate steel.