The Bayadere

A poem by Alan Seeger (1888-1916)

Flaked, drifting clouds hide not the full moon’s rays

More than her beautiful bright limbs were hid

By the light veils they burned and blushed amid,

Skilled to provoke in soft, lascivious ways,

And there was invitation in her voice

And laughing lips and wonderful dark eyes,

As though above the gates of Paradise

Fair verses bade, Be welcome and rejoice!

O’er rugs where mottled blue and green and red

Blent in the patterns of the Orient loom,

Like a bright butterfly from bloom to bloom,

She floated with delicious arms outspread.

There was no pose she took, no move she made,

But all the feverous, love-envenomed flesh

Wrapped round as in the gladiator’s mesh

And smote as with his triple-forked blade.

I thought that round her sinuous beauty curled

Fierce exhalations of hot human love, —

Around her beauty valuable above

The sunny outspread kingdoms of the world;

Flowing as ever like a dancing fire

Flowed her belled ankles and bejewelled wrists,

Around her beauty swept like sanguine mists

The nimbus of a thousand hearts’ desire.

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Poems in English 

• Hand Dark by Ada Cambridge
• Granny by Ada Cambridge
• Future Verdict by Ada Cambridge
• Easter Decorations by Ada Cambridge
• Dawnlight On The Sea by Ada Cambridge
• Dawn by Ada Cambridge
• Dawn God039s Sabbath by Ada Cambridge
• Candle Lord by Ada Cambridge
• By The Camp Fire by Ada Cambridge
• By A Norfolk Broad by Ada Cambridge
• Baptistry by Ada Cambridge
• Aunt Dorothys Lecture by Ada Cambridge
• At Sea by Ada Cambridge
• At Long Last by Ada Cambridge
• An Old Doll by Ada Cambridge
• An Anniversary by Ada Cambridge
• All Saints Day 1868 by Ada Cambridge
• All Saints Day 1867 by Ada Cambridge
• After Our Likeness by Ada Cambridge
• A Story At Dusk by Ada Cambridge

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