Thy mouth is like a crimson orchid-flow’r,

Whence perfume and whence poison rise unseen

To moons aswim in iris or in green,

Or mix with morning in an eastern bow’r.

Thou shouldst have known, in amaranthine isles,

The sunsets hued like fire of frankincense,

Or the long noons enfraught with redolence,

The mingled spicery of purple miles.

Thy breasts, where blood and molten marble flow,

Thy warm white limbs, thy loins of tropic snow—

These, these, by which desire is grown divine,

Were made for dreams in mystic palaces,

For love, and sleep, and slow voluptuousness,

And summer seas a-foam like foaming wine.