Symphony in White Major by Théophile Gautier

In the Northern tales of eld, / From the Rhine's escarpments high / Swan-women radiant were beheld, / Singing and floating by,

Or, leaving their plumage bright / On a bough that was bending low, / Displaying skin more gleaming white / Than the white of their down of snow.

At times one comes our way, -- / Of all she is pallidest, / White as the moonbeam's shivering ray / On a glacier's icy crest.

Her boreal bloom doth win / Our eyes to feasting rare / On rich delight of nacreous skin, / And a wealth of whiteness fair.

Her rounded breasts, pale globes / Of snow, wage insolent war / With her camellias and her robes / Of whiteness nebular.

In such white wars supreme / She wins, and weft and flower / Leave their revenge's right, and seem / Yellowed with envy's hour.

On the white of her shoulder bare, / Whose marble Paros lends, / As through the Polar twilight fair, / Invisible frost descends.

What beaming virgin snow, / What pith a reed within, / What Host, what taper, did bestow / The white of her matchless skin?

Was she made of a milky drop / On the blue of a winter heaven? / The lily-blow on the stem's green top? / The foam of the sea at even?

Of the marble still and cold, / Wherein the great gods dwell? / Of creamy opal gems that hold / Faint fires of mystic spell?

Or the organ's ivory keys? / Her winged fingers oft / Like butterflies flit over these, / With kisses pending soft.

Of the ermine's stainless fold, / Whose white, warm touches fall / On shivering shoulders and on bold, / Bright shields armorial?

Of the phantom flowers of frost / Enscrolled on the window clear? / Of the fountain drop in the chill air lost, / An Undine's frozen tear?

Of May bent low with the sweets / Of her bountiful white-thorn bloom? / Of alabaster that repeats / The pallor of grief and gloom?

Of the feathers of doves that slip / And snow on the gable steep? / Of slow stalactite's tear-white drip / In cavernous places deep?

Came she from Greenland floes / With Seraphita forth? / Is she Madonna of the Snows? / A sphinx of the icy North,

Sphinx buried by avalanche, / The glacier's guardian ghost, / Whose frozen secrets hide and blanch / In her white heart innermost?

What magic of what far name / Shall this pale soul ignite? / Ah! who shall flush with rose's flame / This cold, implacable white?