T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Creation Songs
By Muriel Strode(From A Soul’s Faring, 1921) I WILL tell you the things that will ravish your ear to hear, for I am Life’s lover.I | |
She told me her secrets, as she lay in my wanton arms. | |
She told me the things of her deep yearning, of her secret heart. | |
She told them to my love for her, to the press of my breast. | |
She told herself to my kisses. | 5 |
She met my warm breath with disclosures, as she held me close in an informing embrace. | |
II I am Life’s lover! | |
I plant the meaning of my great yearning upon her upturned lips. | |
I press her to my breast in a great answering. | |
She shall define the meaning of my fire and fever. | 10 |
III I am the love-mad of life. | |
I have reached out in my pain to the love-frenzied grouse. | |
I have called in my understanding to the deer in their rutting season. | |
I have come with gentle words to the mating chirpings in the eaves. | |
I have touched tenderly the seeking pollen. | 15 |
I have come with bated breath to the spawn at the beginnings of streams. | |
I am the ache of overfullness. | |
My breasts are crowded with containing. | |
My hands tremble with the eagerness of me. | |
I am rent and torn with the pain of the unexpressed. | 20 |
IV I am drunk with being,— | |
Life’s inebriate reeling down an enchanted way. | |
I shout my maudlin greeting to the trees. | |
I grasp familiarly the gentle fingers of the grass. | |
I press my wine-wet lips to the roses with my insistent kissing. | 25 |
V I know the thrill of the grasses when the rain pours over them. | |
I know the trembling of the leaves when the winds sweep through them. | |
I know what the white clover felt as it held a drop of dew pressed close in its beauteousness. | |
I know the quivering of the fragrant petals at the touch of the pollen-legged bees. | |
I know what the stream said to the dipping willows, and what the moon said to the sweet lavender. | 30 |
I know what the stars said when they came stealthily down and crept fondly into the tops of the trees. | |
VI I am the omnipotent life, the potency-thrill. | |
I am the fructifier meeting the urge of space, scattering my spawn like the dust of stars in the Milky Way. | |
I am red fire leaping in and out of channels, the insistence of me, the yearning. | |
I am the demand. | 35 |
VII I am drunk with the wine of me, intoxicant of my own being, | |
Bacchante of my own soul’s steepings, | |
Beset by the realization of me, driven by knowing. | |
I pour myself out like the singing starling. | |
I drink, and kiss Life’s wanton lips with the dripping lips of me. | 40 |
VIII I am the universe’s harlot, | |
Selling myself to ecstasy’s thrills; | |
Giving myself to be debauched of stars, ravished of ineffableness; | |
Seduced by a wanton ungraspableness; | |
Coming to marriage bed with infinity’s horde, | 45 |
Wanton wife of the eternity of things. | |