Rake Reflective: A Midsummer Reverie.

She must have had her fill to drink,

since, no sooner bodies sundered,

like one succumbing to a drug,

she slumbered.

All too alert, he quits her side,

before the glass to take his place,

thereat to smoke a cigarette.

Behold that face!

Calm are the eyes that meet his stare,

set in a sated countenance,

and from his lips he blows white smoke,

with nonchalance.

Into the air it creeps and twists,

like the strands of a ghostly vine,

in wisps and thicker curlicues

rising all the time.

Gazing, as in a magic pool,

in front of the mirror he sits;

strange and removed his room there seems,

fringed with mists.

Strange, too, the body on the bed,

so bare, so prone and indiscreet;

so brazen the mound of the hips

even in sleep.

No need there was for lecher's guile

to lure her to his private den;

no stranger those young eager limbs

to the limbs of men.

Yet her face might an angel suit,

maidenly, too, her fair tresses,

like those young girls of fairy tale,

those coy princesses.

Doubtless, with traits as soft as these,

she could a tender mind ensnare,

has left a few idolaters

to taste despair.

A minor smile his lips distort,

savouring an ironic wrong,

  one man's mere conquest of a night

another's love lifelong.

A female face floats into view,

and now several more have come,

each a face that he once adored,

each, in their turn, the one.

Loves long lost but never forgot!

What fool does not such phantoms boast?

It is an ancient vanity,

this prizing of the ghost.

For who expects to be smitten?

Every daughter and every son!

It is the general drama,

common to everyone.

No such frailty now in him,

of sentiment long since empty,

glad, indeed, to be bankrupt,

having ached aplenty.

He now one of the vampire class,

of the fickle, gone beyond love,

though drawn to those who still have hearts

as to the stars above.

He's a drifter in that dreamworld

where seek the hollow to get by,

a state, he might confess, wherein

yet hopes he not to die.

Pondering comes now to a close;

there heard the first few chirps of dawn;

weariness overtaking him,

he gives a yawn.

Crushing the butt-end in a tray,

he retires anew for the night

and, pulling the bedclothes over both,

puts out the light.