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Home  »  Poetica Erotica  »  Sapphic Ode XXXIII: “Maids, not to you my mind doth change”

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

Sapphic Ode XXXIII: “Maids, not to you my mind doth change”

By Michael Field (Katherine Harris Bradley) (1846–1914)
 
(From Long Ago, 1889)

MAIDS, not to you my mind doth change;
Men I defy, allure, estrange,
Prostrate, make bond or free:
Soft as the stream beneath the plane
To you I sing my love’s refrain;        5
Between us is no thought of pain,
  Peril, satiety.
 
Soon doth a lover’s patience tire,
But ye to manifold desire
Can yield response, ye know        10
When for long, museful days I pine,
The presage at my heart divine;
To you I never breathed a sign
Of inward want or woe.
 
When injuries my spirit bruise,        15
Allaying virtue ye infuse
With unobtrusive skill:
And if care frets ye come to me
As fresh as nymph from stream or tree,
And with your soft vitality        20
  My weary bosom fill.