dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Happiest

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

Happiest

By George Sterling (1869–1926)
 
(1921)

CALLING you now, not for your flesh I call,
  Nor for the mad, long raptures of the night
  And passion in its beauty and its might,
When the ecstatic bodies rise and fall.
I cannot feign: God knows I see it all—        5
  The flaming senses, raving with delight,
  The leopards, swift and terrible and white,
Within the loins that shudder as they crawl.
 
All that could I exultingly forego,
  Could I but stand, one flash of time, and see        10
Your heavenly, entrancing face, and know
    I stood most blest of all beneath the sun,
  Hearing these words from your fond lips to me:
    “I love, love you, and love no other one!”