Voyages III

Infinite consanguinity it bears

This tendered theme of you that light

Retrieves from sea plains where the sky

Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones;

While ribboned water lanes I wind

Are laved and scattered with no stroke

Wide from your side, whereto this hour

The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.

And so, admitted through black swollen gates

That must arrest all distance otherwise,

Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,

Light wrestling there incessantly with light,

Star kissing star through wave on wave unto

Your body rocking!

and where death, if shed,

Presumes no carnage, but this single change,-

Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn

The silken skilled transmemberment of song;

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands . .