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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Bacchante

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

Bacchante

By Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff (1888–1959)
 
(From Narcissus and Other Poems, 1918)

I AM inebriate with the sunlight’s golden wine,
And I would love with an insensate fury!
 
Let me drain beauty even unto death!
Bring me a languid woman, perfumed, young,
Her dusky body hung with dazzling gems        5
And strange exotic iridescent stuffs—
Her wanton eyes like thirsty summer moons.
 
Oh, I would love with an insensate fury!
Bring me a pale flower-boy,
White-limbed like a young heifer in a field,        10
His lips a quiver with unknown desire….
His soft throat virgin beneath my kiss,
His bosom like a bower of stars.
 
I would dance like a drunken fawn amid the wood,
Enraptured with the budding pollen-scents!        15