Love

Deep in the moving depths

Of yellow wine,

I swore I’d drown your face,

O love of mine;

All clad in yellow hue,

So fair to see,

You crouched within my cup

And laughed at me.

Twice o’er a learned page

I turned and tossed,

For would I not forget

The love I lost.

All stern and robed in gloom,

You read it too,

I could not see the words—

Saw only you.

Within the hungry chase

I thought to kill

You, love, who haunted thus

Without my will,

But in the gentle gaze

Of fawn and deer,

Your eyes disarmed my hand,

And shook my spear.

Beneath a maid’s dark lash

I swore you’d drown,

Sink in the laughing blue—

Give in, go down:

But no! you bathèd there

Right joyously,

And from her liquid eyes

You laughed at me.