Song 

You are as gold 
as the half-ripe grain 
that merges to gold again, 
as white as the white rain 
that beats through 
the half-opened flowers 
of the great flower tufts 
thick on the black limbs 
of an Illyrian apple bough.

  Can honey distill such fragrance 
As your bright hair—
For your face is as fair as rain, 
  yet as rain that lies clear 
  on white honey-comb,
lends radiance to the white wax, 
so your hair on your brow 
casts light for a shadow.

From Hymen, 1921. From The Imagist Poem: Modern Poetry in Miniature: An Anthology of the Finest Imagist Poems, edited by William Pratt and published by Story Line Press. © 2001 by the Estate of Hilda Doolittle. Posted with permission of Story Line Press. All rights reserved.