After hot loveless nights, when cold winds stream

Sprinkling the frost and dew, before the light,

Bored with the foolish things that girls must dream

Because their beds are empty of delight,

Two sisters rise and strip. Out from the night

Their horses run to their low-whistled pleas—

Vast phantom shapes with eyeballs rolling white

That sneeze a fiery steam about their knees:

Through the crisp manes their stealthy prowling hands,

Stronger than curbs, in slow caresses rove,

They gallop down across the milk-white sands

And wade far out into the sleeping cove:

The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss

As intimate as love, as cold as death:

Their lips, whereon delicious tremors hiss,

Fume with the ghostly pollen of their breath.

Far out on the grey silence of the flood

They watch the dawn in smouldering gyres expand

Beyond them: and the day burns through their blood

Like a white candle through a shuttered hand.