X RAYS

Your eyes were gem-like in that dim deep chamber

Hushed and sombre with imprisoned fire,

With yellow ghostly globes of intense aether

Potent as the rays of pure desire.

Your voice was startled into vivid wonder,

When the winged wild whining mystic wheel

Took flight and shot the dark with frosty crashings

Like an ice-berg splitting to the keel.

Your flesh was never warmer to my passion

Than when, moving in that lumor green,

We saw with eyes our fragile bones enamoured

Clasping sadly on the pallid screen.

You seemed so virginal and so undreaming

Of the burning hunger in my eyes,

To peer more fever-deeply in your being

Than the very death of passion lies.

The subtle-tuned shy motions of your spirit,

Fashioned through the ages for the sun,

Were dumb in that green lustre-haunted cavern

Where you walked a naked skeleton;

Slim-hipped and fluent and of lovely motion,

Living to the tip of every bone,

And ah, too exquisitely vivid-moving

Ever to lie wanly down alone —

To lie forever down so still and slender,

Tracing on the ancient screen of night

That naked and pale writing of the wonder

Of your beauty breathing in the light.