I saw you come in a swan’s shape,
But when you covered my escape,
Closing my shade in that white down
Which cast no shadow of its own,
I rose, seeing earth and heaven join,
Until the glory from your loin
Leapt in my body, and, leaping, made
The whole sky pure.
I sank, afraid
Of such pure terror. Then I knew
What a god could, swan could not, do.
How long before that hour had I
Loved as a virgin, doomed to die?
Kisses were dear, time short, but now
Time can but last as you allow;
And still the hour-glass runs. I pray:
If you come back, come after day.
Let sunset vanish from the wall,
The colours, deepening, fade and fall.
Then, in clear darkness, in cold state,
Let birth on revelation wait.
How quick love’s infant moves in me,
How the child kicks, to be set free!
The leaves are darkening like a storm.
Come down, but come in your true form!
No masks or copies now suffice:
Show me the face that none sees twice.
I hardly see beneath the shapes
Of clouds, the black, full-ripened grapes,
But hear the first drops fall, and now
Your thunders reinforce my vow.
Now show, though I be struck stone dead,
All radiance in one instant shed.
Put temperate meanings from my mind:
If truth be blinding, make me blind.
Purge all but your own power away
With brightness more intense than day,
And all my nature now prepare
To bear what none but I must bear.
I hear my pulse beat fast, I hear
The quickening drops, like steps, come near.
Another second must reveal
The last, irrevocable seal
Flashed by the god.
So here I stand,
Parting the curtain with my hand
To reach the unbridled element
Entirely at each moment spent.
Time is translated; I am dumb
Because the unrivalled hour is come.
I, killed by lightning, loved the vine.
My unborn child, being half divine,
Mingling a twofold fire, shall make
The crushed wine glitter for my sake
Who never saw him. May he know
The soil of Greece where vine-leaves grow,
And may my shade in this true place
Protect him from his father’s face.
Infant of one he cannot see,
May he be saved from following me.
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