T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Song: “I know you beautiful and fair”
By Alice Corbin Henderson (1881–1949)(From Poetry, 1920) I KNOW you beautiful and fair | |
| Beyond delight; | |
| I know our bodies bare | |
| In love unite, | |
| Yet weep for passion’s flight. | 5 |
| I weep because the rose | |
| Must fade away; | |
| I weep because of words | |
| That lead astray; | |
| I weep that passion never tells | 10 |
| What it longs to say. | |
| Though your breast lie on my breast, | |
| Still in vain the lover’s quest; | |
| Like the dryads in the woods | |
| Powerless to tell their moods— | 15 |
| In a world of forest spells | |
| Never half the lover tells. | |