The Hunter’s Game

I am an arrow, I am a bow –

The bow sings fierce and deep,

The arrow’s tipped with cruel flame,

Feathered with passionate sleep.

When you play the hunter’s game,

I am your arrow and your bow.

Only my love can bend the bow:

When the bow leaps to kill

And darkly as a nerve of night

The string throbs out, you are the skill

That drew the impulsive bowstring tight,

The hand that bent the bow.

What is the air that floats my arrow

Smoothly aloft and bears

It up to the sun, down to the dark?

You are the wanton airs

Which shape and hold its shining arc,

The innocent air that flights the arrow.

What is the victim of this arrow

That flies so fast and true?

Deep in the close, fawn-dappled glade,

Pierced by a shaft of light are you

The huntress, white and smiling, laid –

The victim of your arrow.