Intime

Returning, I find her just the same,     At just the same old delicate game.     Still she says: "Nay, loose no flame     To lick me up and do me harm!     Be all yourself! - for oh, the charm     Of your heart of fire in which I look!     Oh, better there than in any book     Glow and enact the dramas and dreams     I love for ever! - there it seems     You are lovelier than life itself, till desire     Comes licking through the bars of your lips     And over my face the stray fire slips,     Leaving a burn and an ugly smart     That will have the oil of illusion. Oh, heart     Of fire and beauty, loose no more     Your reptile flames of lust; ah, store     Your passion in the basket of your soul,     Be all yourself, one bonny, burning coal     That stays with steady joy of its own fire.     But do not seek to take me by desire.     Oh, do not seek to thrust on me your fire!     For in the firing all my porcelain     Of flesh does crackle and shiver and break in pain,     My ivory and marble black with stain,     My veil of sensitive mystery rent in twain,     My altars sullied, I, bereft, remain     A priestess execrable, taken in vain - "          So the refrain     Sings itself over, and so the game     Re-starts itself wherein I am kept     Like a glowing brazier faintly blue of flame     So that the delicate love-adept     Can warm her hands and invite her soul,     Sprinkling incense and salt of words     And kisses pale, and sipping the toll     Of incense-smoke that rises like birds.     Yet I've forgotten in playing this game,     Things I have known that shall have no name;     Forgetting the place from which I came     I watch her ward away the flame,     Yet warm herself at the fire - then blame     Me that I flicker in the basket;     Me that I glow not with content     To have my substance so subtly spent;     Me that I interrupt her game.     I ought to be proud that she should ask it     Of me to be her fire-opal - .          It is well     Since I am here for so short a spell     Not to interrupt her? - Why should I     Break in by making any reply!