You -- you -- <br />Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver; <br />Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies; <br />Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air. <br /> <br />The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from a rising sun; <br />It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path. <br /> <br />As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning. <br />Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts, <br />Your words are bees about a pear-tree, <br />Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples. <br />I drink your lips, <br />I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet. <br />My mouth is open, <br />As a new jar I am empty and open. <br />Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth, <br />Like a brook of water thronged with lilies. <br /> <br />You are frozen as the clouds, <br />You are far and sweet as the high clouds. <br />I dare to reach to you, <br />I dare to touch the rim of your brightness. <br />I leap beyond the winds, <br />I cry and shout, <br />For my throat is keen as is a sword <br />Sharpened on a hone of ivory. <br />My throat sings the joy of my eyes, <br />The rushing gladness of my love. <br /> <br />How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart? <br />How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers <br />And caught the sky to be a cover for my head? How have you come to dwell with me, <br />Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness, <br />So that I say "Glory! Glory!" and bow before you <br />As to a shrine? <br /> <br />Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after? <br />Do I think the air is a condescension, <br />The earth a politeness, <br />Heaven a boon deserving thanks? <br />So you -- air -- earth -- heaven -- <br />I do not thank you, <br />I take you, <br />I live. <br />And those things which I say in consequence <br />Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.<br /><br />Amy Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-excelsis/
