Ode on Beauty.

Infinite peace is hanging in the air,             Infinite peace is resting on mine eyes,         That just an hour ago learnt how to bear             Seeing your body's flaming harmonies.         The grey clouds flecked with orange are and gold,             Birds unto rest are falling, falling, falling,                 And all the earth goes slowly into night,                 Steadily turning from the harshly bright         Sunset.    And now the wind is growing cold             And in my heart a hidden voice is calling.         Say, is our sense of beauty mixed with earth             When lip on lip and breast on breast we cling,         When ecstasy brings short bright sobs to birth             And all our pulses, both our bodies sing?         When through the haze that gathers on my sight             I see your eyelids, know the eyes behind                 See me and half not see me, when our blood                 Goes roaring like a deep tremendous flood,         Calm and terrific in unhasty might,             Is then our inner sight sealed up and blind?         Or could it be that when our blood was colder             And side by side we sat with lips disparted         I saw the perfect line of your resting shoulder,             Your mouth, your peaceful throat with fuller-hearted,         More splendid joy?    Ah poignant joys all these!             And rest can stab the heart as well as passion.                 Yea, I have known sobs choke my heart to see                 Your honey-coloured hair move languorously,         Ruffled, not by my hands, but by the breeze,             And I have prayed the rough air for compassion.         Yea, I have knelt to the unpiteous air             And knelt to gods I knew not, to remove         The viewless hands whose sight I could not bear             Out of the wind-blown head of her I love.         Ecstasy enters me and cannot speak,             Seizes my hands and smites my fainting eyes                 And sends through all my veins a dim despair                 Of never apprehending all so fair         And I have stood, unnerved and numb and weak,             Watching your breathing bosom fall and rise.         Ah no!    This joy is empty, incomplete,             And sullied with a sense of too much longing,         Where thoughts and fancies, sweet and bitter-sweet,             And old regrets and new-born hopes come thronging.         Man can see beauty for a moment's space             And live, having seen her with an unfilmed eye,                 If all his body and all his soul in one                 Instant are tuned by passion to unison         And I can image in your kissing face             The eternal meaning of the earth and sky.