The poppy that my heart was, formed to blind all mortals, made to strike and gather hearts like flame upon an altar, fades and shrinks, a red leaf drenched and torn in the cold rain.
Can flame beget white steel-- ah no, it could not take within my reins its shelter; steel must seek steel, or hate make out of joy a whet-stone for a sword; sword against flint, Theseus sought Hippolyta; she yielded not nor broke, sword upon stone, from the clash leapt a spark, Hippolytus, born of hate.
What did she think when all her strength was twisted for his bearing; did it break, even within her sheltered heart, a song, some whispered note, distant and faint as this:
_Love that I bear within my breast how is my armour melted how my heart: as an oak-tree that keeps beneath the snow, the young bark fresh till the spring cast from off its shoulders the white snow so does my armour melt._
_Love that I bear within my heart, O speak; tell how beneath the serpent-spotted shell, the cygnets wait, how the soft owl opens and flicks with pride, eye-lids of great bird-eyes, when underneath its breast the owlets shrink and turn._
You have the power, (then did she say) Artemis, benignity to grant forgiveness that I gave no quarter to an enemy who cast his armour on the forest-moss, and took, unmatched in an uneven contest, Hippolyta who relented not, returned and sought no kiss.
Then did she pray: Artemis, grant that no flower be grafted alien on a broken stalk, no dark flame-laurel on the stricken crest of a wild mountain-poplar; grant in my thought, I never yield but wait, entreating cold white river, mountain-pool and salt: let all my veins be ice, until they break (strength of white beach, rock of mountain land, forever to you, Artemis, dedicate) from out my reins, those small, cold hands.
Swift and a broken rock clatters across the steep shelf of the mountain slope, sudden and swift and breaks as it clatters down into the hollow breach of the dried water-course: far and away (through fire I see it, and smoke of the dead, withered stalks of the wild cistus-brush) Hippolyta, frail and wild, galloping up the slope between great boulder and rock and group and cluster of rock.
Was she so chaste, (I see it, sharp, this vision, and each fleck on the horse's flanks of foam, and bridle and bit, silver, and the straps, wrought with their perfect art, and the sun, striking athwart the silver-work, and the neck, strained forward, ears alert, and the head of a girl flung back and her throat.)