COPYRIGHT MCMXXIII BY E E CUMMINGS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF
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Illustration] Harun Omar and Master Hafizkeep your dead beautiful ladies.Mine is a little lovelierthan any of your ladies were. In her perfectest arraymy lady, moving in the day,is a little stranger thingthan crisp Sheba with her kingin the morning wandering. [Illustration] Through the young and awkward hoursmy lady perfectly moving,through the new world scarce astirmy fragile lady wanderingin whose perishable poiseis the mystery of Spring(with her beauty more than snowdexterous and fugitivemy very frail lady driftingdistinctly, moving like a mythin the uncertain morning, withApril feet like sudden flowers [Illustration] [Illustration] and all her body filled with May)—moving in the unskilful daymy lady utterly alive,to me is a more curious thing(a thing more nimble and complete)than ever to Judea’s kingwere the shapely sharp cunningand withal delirious feetof the Princess Salomecarefully dancing in the noiseof Herod’s silence, long ago. If she a little turn her headi know that i am wholly dead:nor ever did on such a throatthe lips of Tristram slowly dote,La beale Isoud whose leman was.And if my lady look at me(with her eyes which like two elvesincredibly amuse themselves)with a look of færie,perhaps a little suddenly(as sometimes the improbablebeauty of my lady will)—at her glance my spirit shiesrearing (as in the miracleof a lady who had eyeswhich the king’s horses might not kill.) [Illustration] But should my lady smile, it werea flower of so pure surprise(it were so very new a flower,a flower so frail, a flower so glad)as trembling used to yield with dewwhen the world was young and new(a flower such as the world hadin Springtime when the world was madand Launcelot spoke to Guenever,a flower which most heavy hungwith silence when the world was youngand Diarmid looked in Grania’s eyes.)But should my lady’s beauty playat not speaking (somtimes asit will) the silence of her facedoth immediately makein my heart so great a noise,as in the sharp and thirsty bloodof Paris would not all the Troysof Helen’s beauty: never didLord Jason (in impossible thingsvictorious impossibly)so wholly burn, to undertakeMedea’s rescuing eyes; nor hewhen swooned the white egyptian daywho with Egypt’s body lay. [Illustration]
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