Her cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white; The white girl hardly breathes to-night, So faint the pulses come and go, That waken to a smouldering glow The morbid faintness of her white. What drowsing heats of sense, desire Longing and languorous, the fire Of what white ashes, subtly mesh The fascinations of her flesh Into a breathing web of fire? Only her eyes, only her mouth, Live, in the agony of drouth, Athirst for that which may not be: The desert of virginity Aches in the hotness of her mouth. I take her hands into my hands, Silently, and she understand; I set my lips upon her lips; Shuddering to her finger-tips She strains my hands within her hands. I set my lips on hers; they close Into a false and phantom rose; Upon her thirsting lips I rain A flood of kisses, and in vain; Her lips inexorably close. Through her closed lips that cling to mine, Her hands that hold me and entwine, Her body that abandoned lies, Rigid with sterile ecstasies, A shiver knits her flesh to mine. Life sucks into a mist remote Her fainting lips, her throbbing throat; Her lips that open to my lips, And, hot against my finger-tips, The pulses leaping in her throat. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE WITCH IN THE GLASS by SARAH MORGAN BRYAN PIATT HEALTHFUL OLD AGE, FR. AS YOU LIKE IT by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE BOY BRITTAN [FEBRUARY 8, 1862] by BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON LINES WRITTEN BY A DEATH-BED by MATTHEW ARNOLD THE WOODLANDS by WILLIAM BARNES A REPLY TO AN IMITATION OF THE SECOND ODE OF HORACE by RICHARD BENTLEY AN ELEGY ON SIR THOMAS OVERBURY; POISONED IN THE TOWER OF LONDON by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) LINES SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN BY BURNS by ROBERT BURNS |