I will give you all my keys, 
  You shall be my châtelaine, 
You shall enter as you please, 
  As you please shall go again. 
 
When I hear you jingling through         
  All the chambers of my soul, 
How I sit and laugh at you 
  In your vain housekeeping rôle. 
 
Jealous of the smallest cover, 
  Angry at the simpler door;         
Well, you anxious, inquisitive lover, 
  Are you pleased with what's in store? 
 
You have fingered all my treasures, 
  Have you not, most curiously, 
Handled all my tools and measures         
  And masculine machinery? 
 
Over every single beauty 
  You have had your little rapture; 
You have slain, as was your duty, 
  Every sin-mouse you could capture.         
 
Still you are not satisfied, 
  Still you tremble faint reproach; 
Challenge me I keep aside 
  Secrets that you may not broach. 
 
Maybe yes, and maybe no,         
  Maybe there are secret places, 
Altars barbarous below, 
  Elsewhere halls of high disgraces. 
 
Maybe yes, and maybe no, 
  You may have it as you please,         
Since I choose to keep you so, 
  Suppliant on your curious knees.

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I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)


How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)


Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)


Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)
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Hard light bathed them— a whole nation of eyeless men,
Dark bipeds not aware how they were maimed. A long
Process, clearly, a slow curse,
Drained through centuries, left them thus.

At some transitional stage, then, a luckless few,
No doubt, must have had eyes after the up-to-date,
Normal type had achieved snug
Darkness, safe from the guns of heav’n;

Whose blind mouths would abuse words that belonged to their
Great-grandsires, unabashed, talking of light in some
Eunuch’d, etiolated,
Fungoid sense, as a symbol of

Abstract thoughts. If a man, one that had eyes, a poor
Misfit, spoke of the grey dawn or the stars or green-
Sloped sea waves, or admired how
Warm tints change in a lady’s cheek,

None complained he had used words from an alien tongue,
None question’d. It was worse. All would agree. ‘Of course,’
Came their answer. ‘We’ve all felt
Just like that.’ They were wrong. And he

Knew too much to be clear, could not explain. The words—
Sold, raped, flung to the dog—now could avail no more;
Hence silence. But the mouldwarps,
With glib confidence, easily

Showed how tricks of the phrase, sheer metaphors could set
Fools concocting a myth, taking the words for things.
Do you think this a far-fetched
Picture? Go then about among

Men now famous; attempt speech on the truths that once,
Opaque, carved in divine forms, irremovable,
Dread but dear as a mountain-
Mass, stood plain to the inward eye.
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