Then he caught, seeing the fire in my eyes, my fire, my fever, perhaps, for he leaned with the purple wine stained in his sleeve, and said this: "Did you ever think a girl's mouth caught in a kiss is a lily that laughs?"
I had not. I saw it now as men must see it forever afterwards; no poet could write again, "the red-lily, a girl's laugh caught in a kiss;" it was his to pour in the vat from which all poets dip and quaff, for poets are brothers in this.
So I saw the fire in his eyes, it was almost my fire (he was younger) I saw the face so white; my heart beat, it was almost my phrase, I said, "surprise the muses, take them by surprise; it is late, rather it is dawn-rise, those ladies sleep, the nine, our own king's mistresses."
A name to rhyme, flowers to bring to a name, what was one girl faint and shy, with eyes like the myrtle (I said: "her underlids are rather like myrtle"), to vie with the nine?
Let him take the name, he had the rhymes, "the rose, loved of love," "the lily, a mouth that laughs," he had the gift, "the scented crocus, the purple hyacinth," what was one girl to the nine?
He said: "I will make her a wreath;" he said: "I will write it thus: _'I will bring you the lily that laughs, I will twine with soft narcissus, the myrtle, sweet crocus, white violet, the purple hyacinth and, last, the rose, loved of love, that these may drip on your hair the less soft flowers, may mingle sweet with the sweet of Heliodora's locks, myrrh-curled.'_"
(He wrote myrrh-curled, I think, the first.)
I said: "they sleep, the nine," when he shouted swift and passionate: "_that_ for the nine! Above the mountains the sun is about to wake, _and to-day white violets shine beside white lilies adrift on the mountain side; to-day the narcissus opens that loves the rain_."
I watched him to the door, catching his robe as the wine-bowl crashed to the floor, spilling a few wet lees (ah, his purple hyacinth!); I saw him out of the door, I thought: there will never be a poet, in all the centuries after this, who will dare write, after my friend's verse, "a girl's mouth is a lily kissed."
_Slay with your eyes, Greek, men over the face of the earth, slay with your eyes, the host, puny, passionless, weak._