Sonnet 54

Starry freckles blaze upon her cheeks

And dance like the hearth’s straying sparks,

They pulse like dawn in winter weeks

Over the mist-dewed hymns of larks.

By night, these moth-kissed lanterns lie

In a milk-white field of roses,

Beneath a candle-studded sky,

Where each constellation poses.

Her lips are a parting couplet,

Cherry-rouge like the salvia verge

Where the breath of wind-swept scarlet

Sways beneath the pale shade of birch,

Yet I’ll rise to wake, she’ll pass on,

And all such dreams will soon be gone.