YOU are as gold as the half—ripe grain that merges to gold again, as white as the white rain that beats through

Over and back, the long waves crawl and track the sand with foam; night darkens, and the sea takes on that desperate tone

Are you alive? I touch you. You quiver like a sea—fish. I cover you with my net. What are you —banded one?

Thou art come at length More beautiful Than any cool god In a chamber under Lycia’s far coast,

Where the slow river meets the tide, a red swan lifts red wings and darker beak, and underneath the purple down

Stars wheel in purple, yours is no… as Hesperus, nor yet so great a st… as bright Aldeboran or Sirius, nor yet the stained and brilliant… stars turn in purple, glorious to…

So you have swept me back, I who could have walked with the l… above the earth, I who could have slept among the l… at last;

White, O white face— from disenchanted days wither alike dark rose and fiery bays: no gift within our hands,

From citron—bower be her bed, cut from branch of tree a—flower, fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, cut the width of board and lathe,

I first tasted under Apollo’s lip… love and love sweetness, I, Evadne; my hair is made of crisp violets or hyacinth which the wind combs b…

Each of us like you has died once, has passed through drift of wood—l… cracked and bent and tortured and unbent