The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 37. ...Her dreaming must be sad...

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Love Sleep

Watch my Love in sleep:

Is she not beautiful

As a young flower at night

Weary and glad with dew?

Pale curved body

That I have kissed too much,

Warm with summer’s flush;

Breasts like mounded snow,

Too small for children’s mouths;

Lips a red spring bud

My love will bring to bloom.

How restlessly she moves!

She, no more than a child,

Stirs like a woman troubled

With guilt of secret sins.

Twin furtive tears

Glide from the shadows,

Her eyes’ shadowed blue.

Her dreaming must be sad.

What grief to watching love

That it is impotent,

For all its reckless strength,

When the sleep gates close.

—Elsa Gidlow,[i]

1923