The Kiss

Are you shaken, are you stirred By a whisper of love, Spellbound to a word Does Time cease to move, Till her calm grey eye Expands to a sky And the clouds of her hair Like storms go by? Then the lips that you have kissed Turn to frost and fire, And a white-steaming mist Obscures desire: So back to their birth Fade water, air, earth, And the First Power moves Over void and dearth. Is that Love? no, but Death, A passion, a shout, The deep in-breath, The breath roaring out, And once that is flown, You must lie alone, Without hope, without life, Poor flesh, sad bone.