from The Bridge: The Dance

By Hart Crane

The swift red flesh, a winter king—

Who squired the glacier woman down the sky?

She ran the neighing canyons all the spring;

She spouted arms; she rose with maize—to die.

And in the autumn drouth, whose burnished hands

With mineral wariness found out the stone

Where prayers, forgotten, streamed the mesa sands?

He holds the twilight’s dim, perpetual throne,

Mythical brows we saw retiring—loth,

Disturbed and destined, into denser green.

Greeting they sped us, on the arrow’s oath:

Now lie incorrigibly what years between . .

There was a bed of leaves, and broken play

There was a veil upon you, Pocahontas, bride—

O Princess whose brown lap was virgin May;

And bridal flanks and eyes hid tawny pride.

I left the village for dogwood. By the canoe

Tugging below the mill-race, I could see

Your hair’s keen crescent running, and the blue

First moth of evening take wing stealthily.

What laughing chains the water wove and threw.

I learned to catch the trout’s moon whisper; I

Drifted how many hours I never knew,

But, watching, saw that fleet young crescent die,—

We danced, 0 Brave, we danced beyond their farms.

In cobalt desert closures made our vows . . .

Now is the strong prayer folded in thine arms,

The serpent with the eagle in the boughs.

continued...http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=172029