THICK dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade. Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh1, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted2 into The filmy and flickering3 forest, to start out again Triumphant4 in smooth, supple5 roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting6 your lips and Your breasts, Swelling7 out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence8 Of leaves. So, clinging to branches and moss9, you advance on the ledges10 Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you, The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum- oozing11 spruces, While below runs the water impatient, impatient- to take you, To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness, Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders, Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty, Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold you
To keep you submerged and quiescent12 while over you glories The summer. Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant14 perfection, Standing15 up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence16 burns up in a halo, For you are the chalice17 which holds all the races of men. You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, And over the tree-TOPs the clouds slowly follow your swimming, To behold18 the way they act. And the scent13 of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning.
