THICK dappled by circles of sunshine and fluttering shade. Your bright, naked body advances, blown over by leaves, Half-quenched in their various green, just a point Of you showing, A knee or a thigh¹, sudden glimpsed, then at once Blotted² into The filmy and flickering³ forest, to start out again Triumphant⁴ in smooth, supple⁵ roundness, edged Sharp as white ivory, Cool, perfect, with rose rarely tinting⁶ your lips and Your breasts, Swelling⁷ out from the green in the opulent curves Of ripe fruit, And hidden, like fruit, by the swift intermittence⁸ Of leaves. So, clinging to branches and moss⁹, you advance on the ledges¹⁰ Of rock which hang over the stream, with the wood-smells about you, The pungence of strawberry plants and of gum- oozing¹¹ spruces, While below runs the water impatient, impatient- to take you, To splash you, to run down your sides, to sing you of deepness, Of pools brown and golden, with brown-and-gold flags on their borders, Of blue, lingering skies floating solemnly over your beauty, Of undulant waters a-sway in the effort to hold you

    To keep you submerged and quiescent¹² while over you glories The summer. Oread, Dryad, or Naiad, or just Woman, clad only in youth and in gallant¹⁴ perfection, Standing¹⁵ up in a great burst of sunshine, you dazzle my eyes Like a snow-star, a moon, your effulgence¹⁶ burns up in a halo, For you are the chalice¹⁷ which holds all the races of men. You slip into the pool and the water folds over your shoulder, And over the tree-tops the clouds slowly follow your swimming, To behold¹⁸ the way they act. And the scent¹³ of the woods is sweet on this hot summer morning.