White Heliotrope

By Arthur Symons 1865–1945 Arthur Symons

The feverish room and that white bed,

The tumbled skirts upon a chair,

The novel flung half-open, where

Hat, hair-pins, puffs, and paints are spread;

The mirror that has sucked your face

Into its secret deep of deeps,

And there mysteriously keeps

Forgotten memories of grace;

And you half dressed and half awake,

Your slant eyes strangely watching me,

And I, who watch you drowsily,

With eyes that, having slept not, ache;

This (need one dread? nay, dare one hope?)

Will rise, a ghost of memory, if

Ever again my handkerchief

Is scented with White Heliotrope.

Biography

British poet, critic, and translator Arthur Symons was born in Wales and educated by private tutors. At 16, Symons moved to London, where he joined a vibrant literary community and participated, alongside poets like William Butler Yeats, in the notorious Rhymers’ Club, a group of poets and writers responsible for witty repartee anthologies such as The Book of the Rhymers’ Club (1892), in which Symons’s poems appeared.

Symons’s . . .

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