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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Song: “I know you beautiful and fair”

T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.

Song: “I know you beautiful and fair”

By Alice Corbin Henderson (1881–1949)
 
(From Poetry, 1920)

I KNOW you beautiful and fair
Beyond delight;
I know our bodies bare
In love unite,
Yet weep for passion’s flight.        5
 
I weep because the rose
Must fade away;
I weep because of words
That lead astray;
I weep that passion never tells        10
What it longs to say.
 
Though your breast lie on my breast,
Still in vain the lover’s quest;
Like the dryads in the woods
Powerless to tell their moods—        15
In a world of forest spells
Never half the lover tells.