O love, thy lips are bright and cold,

Like jewels carven curiously

To symbols of a mystery,

A secret dim, forgotten, old.

Like woven amber, finely spun,

Thy hair, enwoofed with golden light,

Remembers yet the flaming flight

Of some unknown, archaic sun.

Thine eyes are crystals green and chill,

Wherein, as in a shifting sea,

Wan fires and drowning splendours flee

To stealthy deeps forever still.

Fallen across thy dreaming face,

The dawn is made a secret thing,

Like flame of crimson lamps that swing

At midnight, in a cavern-space.

Thy smile is like the furtive gleam

Of fleeing moons a traveller sees

Through closing arms of cypress-trees,

In secret realms of night and dream.

Sphinx-like, unsolved eternally,

Thy beauty’s riddle doth abide,

And love hath come, and love hath died,

Striving to read the mystery.