Most holy Satyr, like a goat, hear this our song, accept our leaves, love-offering, return our hymn; like echo fling a sweet song, answering note for note.
Let her who walks in Paphos take the glass, let Paphos take the mirror and the work of frosted fruit, gold apples set with silver apple-leaf, white leaf of silver wrought with vein of gilt.
Let Paphos lift the mirror; let her look into the polished center of the disk.
Let Paphos take the mirror: did she press flowerlet of flame-flower to the lustrous white of the white forehead? did the dark veins beat a deeper purple than the wine-deep tint of the dark flower?
Did she deck black hair, one evening, with the winter-white flower of the winter-berry? Did she look (reft of her lover) at a face gone white under the chaplet of white virgin-breath?
Lais, exultant, tyrannizing Greece, Lais who kept her lovers in the porch, lover on lover waiting (but to creep where the robe brushed the threshold where still sleeps Lais), so she creeps, Lais, to lay her mirror at the feet of her who reigns in Paphos.
Lais has left her mirror, for she sees no longer in its depth the Lais' self that laughed exultant, tyrannizing Greece.
Lais has left her mirror, for she weeps no longer, finding in its depth a face, but other than dark flame and white feature of perfect marble.
_Lais has left her mirror_ (so one wrote) _to her who reigns in Paphos; Lais who laughed a tyrant over Greece, Lais who turned the lovers from the porch, that swarm for whom now Lais has no use; Lais is now no lover of the glass, seeing no more the face as once it was, wishing to see that face and finding this._
He and I sought together, over the spattered table, rhymes and flowers, gifts for a name.
He said, among others, I will bring (and the phrase was just and good, but not as good as mine) "the narcissus that loves the rain."
We strove for a name, while the light of the lamps burnt thin and the outer dawn came in, a ghost, the last at the feast or the first, to sit within with the two that remained to quibble in flowers and verse over a girl's name.
He said, "the rain loving," I said, "the narcissus, drunk, drunk with the rain."
Yet I had lost for he said, "the rose, the lover's gift, is loved of love," he said it, "loved of love;" I waited, even as he spoke, to see the room filled with a light, as when in winter the embers catch in a wind when a room is dank: so it would be filled, I thought, our room with a light when he said (and he said it first) "the rose, the lover's delight, is loved of love," but the light was the same.