Favorite poems and quotations.

[Amber]

Unyielding, raged and free

Unyielding, raged and free,
burn, fire, burn on, please...
Decembers tend to be
replaced by Januaries.

We've anything at all:
smiles, joys and everything,
one common moon for all,
one summer and one spring.

We'd live and go to grass
then, come what may, we will
for all the wrongs of ours
stand trial by ordeal.

We do not care, since
we know: when life is gone
for all of our sins
the reckoning is one.

Unyielding, raged and free,
burn, fire, burn on, please...
Decembers have to be
replaced by Januaries.

[Amber]

The Tiger-Woman came to me
When dusk was close and men were dull.
She beckoned from the jungle-path;
I followed, dreaming, fanciful.

The Tiger-Woman’s face is pale,
But oh, her speaking eyes are dark.
No beast can move so lithe as she
Beside the matted river’s mark.

The jungle is a fearsome place
For men who hunt, and men who slay,
But I was not afraid to go
Where Tiger-Woman led the way.

The Tiger-Woman’s lips are thin;
Her teeth are like the Tiger’s teeth.
Yet her soft hands are woman’s hands,
And oh, the blood beats warm beneath.

She led me to a little glade,—
The creepers with the moon inwove,—
And two great striped beasts leaped up
And fawned upon her breast in love.

The Tiger-Woman’s voice was sweet;
I hearkened and was not afraid.
She stroked the Tigers’ fearful jaws;
Upon their heads my hands I laid.

And all the jungle things drew near,
And all the leaves a music made
Like spirits chanting in a choir
Along the bamboo colonnade.

Too sweet for human harps to sound,
It touched my blood, it fired my heart
The Tiger-Woman sang, and I
Sang too, and understood her art.

She kissed the Tiger’s snarling mouth.
She kissed—I marveled that she could—
But now her lips were warm on mine;
I cared not they were dabbed with blood.

What if the traveller shuns my hut,
What if the world forgets to be,
What if I have the Tiger’s heart,—
The Tiger-Woman loveth me!