The Troubadour by Madison Cawein — Read

/ He stood where all the rare voluptuous West, / Like some mad Maenad wine-stained to the breast, / Shot from delirious lips of ruby must / Long, fierce, triumphant smiles wherein hot lust / Swam like a feverish wine exultant tost / High from a golden goblet and so lost. / And all the West, and all the rosy West, / Bathed his frail beauty, hair and throat and breast; / And there he bloomed, a thing of rose and snows, / A passion flower of men of snows and rose / Beneath the casement of her old red tower / Whereat the lady sat, as white a flower / As ever blew in Provence, and the lace, / Mist-like about her hair, half hid her face / And all its moods which his sweet singing raised, / Sad moods that censured it, sweet moods that praised. / And where the white rose climbing over and over / Up to her wide-flung lattice like a lover, / And gladiolas and deep fleurs-de-lis / Held honey-cups up for the violent bee, / Within her garden by the ivied wall, / Where many a fountain falling musical / Flamed fire-fierce in the eve against it flung, / Like some mad nightingale the minstrel sung: --

/ "The passion, O! of plunging through and through / Lascivious curls star-litten as light dew, / And jeweled thick, as is the bosomed dusk / Dense scintillant with stars! Oh frenzy rare / Of twisting curling fingers in thy hair! / No touch of balm-beat winds from torrid seas / Were half so satin-soft in sorceries! / No god-like life so sweet as lost to lie / Wrapped strand on strand deep in such hair and die, / Ah love, sweet love!