Shall I compare you to a rainbowed shower
Drawing to earth the very arc of dream,
Or shall I say you are an orchid flower
That fevers men beside a jungle stream?
Shall I compare you to a windy morning
Because you stir the sleeping blood and brain
To rise and follow beauty till beauty, scorning
Desire’s fleet runners, vanishes again?
No, you are more than spectrum, than the find
Of orchid hunters, than ariel dawn on wings.
And I, who know you are the undefined
Reality of all unreal things,
Now wisely set your breathlessness apart
As the unanswered challenge to the dreamer’s art.
