At Baia
Hilda Doolittle 1886 (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) – 1961 (Zurich)
I should have thought
in a dream you would have brought
some lovely, perilous thing,
orchids piled in a great sheath,
as who would say (in a dream),
"I send you this,
who left the blue veins
of your throat unkissed."
Why was it that your hands
(that never took mine),
your hands that I could see
drift over the orchid-heads
so carefully,
your hands, so fragile, sure to lift
so gently, the fragile flower-stuff--
ah, ah, how was it
You never sent (in a dream)
the very form, the very scent,
not heavy, not sensuous,
but perilous--perilous--
of orchids, piled in a great sheath,
and folded underneath on a bright scroll,
some word:
"Flower sent to flower;
for white hands, the lesser white,
less lovely of flower-leaf,"
or
"Lover to lover, no kiss,
no touch, but forever and ever this."
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 134 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AAXBCDXA XXEXEXXX CXFFBXX XXX DD |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 765 |
Words | 146 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 7, 3, 2 |
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"At Baia" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/19260/at-baia>.
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