HER mouth is fragrant as a vine,
 A vine with birds in all its boughs;
Serpent and scarab for a sign
 Between the beauty of her brows
And the amorous deep lids divine.

Her great curled hair makes luminous
 Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin.
Shall she not have the hearts of us
 To shatter, and the loves therein
To shred between her fingers thus?

Small ruined broken strays of light,
 Pearl after pearl she shreds them through
Her long sweet sleepy fingers, white
 As any pearl's heart veined with blue,
And soft as dew on a soft night.

As if the very eyes of love
 Shone through her shutting lids, and stole
The slow looks of a snake or dove;
 As if her lips absorbed the whole
Of love, her soul the soul thereof.

Lost, all the lordly pearls that were
 Wrung from the sea's heart, from the green
Coasts of the Indian gulf-river;
 Lost, all the loves of the world---so keen
Towards this queen for love of her.

You see against her throat the small
 Sharp glittering shadows of them shake;
And through her hair the imperial
 Curled likeness of the river snake,
Whose bite shall make an end of all.

Through the scales sheathing him like wings,
 Through hieroglyphs of gold and gem,
The strong sense of her beauty stings,
 Like a keen pulse of love in them,
A running flame through all his rings.

Under those low large lids of hers
 She hath the histories of all time;
The fruit of foliage-stricken years;
 The old seasons with their heavy chime
That leaves its rhyme in the world's ears.

She sees the hand of death made bare,
 The ravelled riddle of the skies,
The faces faded that were fair,
 The mouths made speechless that were wise,
The hollow eyes and dusty hair;

The shape and shadow of mystic things,
 Things that fate fashions or forbids;
The staff of time-forgotten Kings
 Whose name falls off the Pyramids,
Their coffin-lids and grave-clothings;

Dank dregs, the scum of pool or clod,
 God-spawn of lizard-footed clans,
And those dog-headed hulks that trod
 Swart necks of the old Egyptians,
Raw draughts of man's beginning God;

The poised hawk, quivering ere he smote,
 With plume-like gems on breast and back;
The asps and water-worms afloat
 Between the rush-flowers moist and slack;
The cat's warm black bright rising throat.

The purple days of drouth expand
 Like a scroll opened out again;
The molten heaven drier than sand,
 The hot red heaven without rain,
Sheds iron pain on the empty land.

All Egypt aches in the sun's sight;
 The lips of men are harsh for drouth,
The fierce air leaves their cheeks burnt white,
 Charred by the bitter blowing south,
Whose dusty mouth is sharp to bite.

All this she dreams of, and her eyes
 Are wrought after the sense hereof.
There is no heart in her for sighs;
 The face of her is more than love---
A name above the Ptolemies.

Her great grave beauty covers her
 As that sleek spoil beneath her feet
Clothed once the anointed soothsayer;
 The hallowing is gone forth from it
Now, made unmeet for priests to wear.

She treads on gods and god-like things,
 On fate and fear and life and death,
On hate that cleaves and love that clings,
 All that is brought forth of man's breath
And perisheth with what it brings.

She holds her future close, her lips
 Hold fast the face of things to be;
Actium, and sound of war that dips
 Down the blown valleys of the sea,
Far sails that flee, and storms of ships;

The laughing red sweet mouth of wine
 At ending of life's festival;
That spice of cerecloths, and the fine
 White bitter dust funereal
Sprinkled on all things for a sign;

His face, who was and was not he,
 In whom, alive, her life abode;
The end, when she gained heart to see
 Those ways of death wherein she trod,
Goddess by god, with Antony.