Bianca

by: Arthur Symons (1865-1945)

ER cheeks are hot, her cheeks are white;

The white girl hardly breathes to-night,

So faint the pulses come and go,

That waken to a smoldering glow

The morbid faintness of her white.

What drowsing heats of sense, desire

Longing and languorous, the fire

Of what white ashes, subtly mesh

The fascinations of her flesh

Into a breathing web of fire?

Only her eyes, only her mouth,

Live, in the agony of drouth,

Athirst for that which may not be:

The desert


Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

I take her hands into my hands,

Silently, and she understands;

I set my lips upon her lips;

Shuddering to her finger-tips

She strains my hands within her hands.

I set my lips on hers; they close

Into a false and phantom rose;

Upon her thirsting lips I rain

A flood of kisses, and in vain;

Her lips inexorably close.

Through her closed lips that cling to mine,

Her hands that hold me and entwine,

Her body that abandoned lies,

Rigid with sterile ecstasies,

A shiver knits her flesh to mine.

Life sucks into a mist remote

Her fainting lips, her throbbing throat;

Her lips that open to my lips,

And, hot against my finger-tips,

The pulses leaping in her throat.