In Excelsis poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry

You – you –

Your shadow is sunlight on a plate of silver;

Your footsteps, the seeding-place of lilies;

Your hands moving, a chime of bells across a windless air.

The movement of your hands is the long, golden running of light from a rising sun;

It is the hopping of birds upon a garden-path.

As the perfume of jonquils, you come forth in the morning.

Young horses are not more sudden than your thoughts,

Your words are bees about a pear-tree,

Your fancies are the gold-and-black striped wasps buzzing among red apples.

I drink your lips,

I eat the whiteness of your hands and feet.

My mouth is open,

As a new jar I am empty and open.

Like white water are you who fill the cup of my mouth,

Like a brook of water thronged with lilies.

You are frozen as the clouds,

You are far and sweet as the high clouds.

I dare to reach to you,

I dare to touch the rim of your brightness.

I leap beyond the winds,

I cry and shout,

For my throat is keen as is a sword

Sharpened on a hone of ivory.

My throat sings the joy of my eyes,

The rushing gladness of my love.

How has the rainbow fallen upon my heart?

How have I snared the seas to lie in my fingers

And caught the sky to be a cover for my head? How have you come to dwell with me,

Compassing me with the four circles of your mystic lightness,

So that I say “Glory! Glory!” and bow before you

As to a shrine?

Do I tease myself that morning is morning and a day after?

Do I think the air is a condescension,

The earth a politeness,

Heaven a boon deserving thanks?

So you – air – earth – heaven –

I do not thank you,

I take you,

I live.

And those things which I say in consequence

Are rubies mortised in a gate of stone.