The Girl with the Black Hair [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

The Girl with the Black Hair

Her lips were a red peril
To set men quivering,
And in her feet there lived the ache
And the green lilt of Spring.

’Twas on a night of red blossoms,
Oh, she was a wild wine!
The colours of all the hours
Lie in this heart of mine.

I was impelled by the white moon
And the deep eyes of the Spring,
And the voices of purple flutes
Waltzing and wavering.

Of all the bloom most delicate,
Sipping the gold air
Was the round girl with round arms —
The girl with the black hair!

Her breath was the breath of roses,
White roses clean and clear;
Her eyes were blue as the high heaven
Where God is always near.

Her lips were a red peril
To set men quivering,
And in her feet there lived the ache
And the green lilt of Spring.

Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, pages 43-44

Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 62
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing Company, 1934, page 39

Editor’s notes:
’twas = (archaic) a contraction of “it was”