Explore "Desire" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I would sing thy face / Sitting here in the firelight; / Mid the senseless noise of guns / Comes it as a flower between the flames.
Sea-blue thine eyes, and bright as hawk's are, / Yet frail thy face as an image in clear water / As a pearl lying there, hidden or plain, when light / Wavers upon it: mobile as thy moods are / Or faint as a star in the mist's milk: / And frail thine hands, / Delicate, / Hovering in infinite slow gesture, nigh speech / Hesitating, poised, / Fragile: they would not mar / Gray bloom on a ripe plum.
I would sing thy face / To forget this.
But thy face sings to me from the slim flames / And my praise is silence, and my prayer.