O the wild rose!
Star of the pastures, sea-girl, sun-child,
Rose of the rocks!

Blue seas break in my heart and sun-waters drench the shores of my spirit ...
You are gone, Great Mother of the Stars, Universe-Mother, you are gone ...
The world is my sea-eyed Sister with the pale pink-petal'd cheeks ...
Sea and headland and wind-lit woods are the beautiful maiden ...
Wild-rose World, world of the sun-magic, world of the maddening body ...

Wild-Rose, beloved, I am snared, I am taken in a net ...
When was I not the slave of beauty,
When did I not fall down when the eyes of beauty transfixed me?

On coasts of moonlight the billows of the stars break into faint sparkles,
Night echoes the delicate star-boom from far lunar shores ...
In the desert the tom-toms roll like the dust: death-peril glows: death grows sweet:

The young white dancer glides with her serpent: she is naked in her glory ...
And in my soul is the perfume of cool lilies-of-the-valley,
And in my soul the wild-rose opens, tear'd with dew ...

Whence have you come in the darkness to be bound throbbing and taut in my arms
Naked new young body hewed from the warm granite of God?
Whence is this passion and madness, breath of the Assyrian desert,
African breath, tigress of night?

Wild-Rose, beloved,
Wild-Rose twined with the deadly night-shade,
Wild-Rose where the cobra lurks.