T. R. Smith, comp. Poetica Erotica: Rare and Curious Amatory Verse. 1921–22.
Summer Storm
By Louis Untermeyer (1885–1977)(From The New Adam, 1920) WE lay together in the sultry night. | |
| A feeble light | |
| From some invisible street-lamp crept | |
| Into the corner where you slept; | |
| Fingered your cheeks, flew softly round your hair, | 5 |
| Then dipped in the sweet valley of your breasts | |
| And fluttered, like a bird between two nests, | |
| Till it lay quiet there. | |
| My eyes were closing and I may have dreamed— | |
| At least it seemed | 10 |
| That you and I | |
| Had ceased to be but were somehow | |
| As earth and sky…. | |
| The night grew closer still, and now | |
| Heat-lightnings played between us and warm thrills | 15 |
| Ran through the cool sides of the trembling hills. | |
| Then darkness and a tension in the black | |
| Hush like a breath held back; | |
| A rippling through the ground, a windless breeze | |
| That reached down to the sensitive roots of trees; | 20 |
| A tremor like the pulse of muffled knocks, | |
| Or like the silent opening of locks … | |
| There was a rising of unfettered seas | |
| With great tides pulling at the stars and rocks | |
| As though to draw them all together. | 25 |
| Then in a burst of blinding weather, | |
| The lightnings flung | |
| Long, passionate arms about the earth that clung | |
| To her wild lover. | |
| Suddenly above her | 30 |
| The whole sky tumbled in a sweeping blaze, | |
| Gathering earth in one tight-locked embrace, | |
| Drenching her in a flood of silver flame. | |
| Hot thunders came; | |
| And still the storm kept plunging, seeking ever | 35 |
| The furthest cranny, till the faraway | |
| Streams felt each penetrating quiver | |
| And the most hidden river | |
| Rose and became released…. | |
| At last the stabbings ceased, | 40 |
| The thunders died. | |
| But still they lay | |
| Side by side, | |
| While moonbeams crept | |
| Into the heavenly corner where earth slept; | 45 |
| Dipping among her rosy hills, lighting above | |
| Her curved and sloping hollows, till | |
| She too was still. | |
| Beloved and blest, | |
| His cloudy head lay, seeking rest | 50 |
| In the sweet-smelling valley of her breast, | |
| And each was huddled in each other’s love; | |
| Or so it seemed … | |
| My eyes were closing and I may have dreamed. | |