FORM
(A Study)
Flower-like and shy,
You stand, sweet mortal, at the river’s brim:
With what unconscious grace
Your limbs to some strange law surrendering
Which lifts you clear of our humanity!
Now would I sacrifice
Your breathing, warmth, and all the strange romance
Of living, to a moment. Ere you break
The greater thing than you, I would my eyes
Were basilisk to turn you into stone.
So should you be the world’s inheritance.
And souls of unborn men should draw their breath
From mortal you, immortalised in Death.