T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Love and Sleep
By Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909)(From Poems and Ballads, 1866) LYING asleep between the strokes of night | |
| I saw my love lean over my sad bed, | |
| Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head, | |
| Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite, | |
| Too wan for blushing and too warm for white, | 5 |
| But perfect-coloured without white or red. | |
| And her lips opened amorously, and said— | |
| I wist not what, saving one word—Delight. | |
| And all her face was honey to my mouth, | |
| And all her body pasture to mine eyes; | 10 |
| The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire, | |
| The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south, | |
| The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs | |
| And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire. | |