This file is produced from the material at Harlem Shadows: A Digital Edition December 6, 2015 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical 4.0 International This file is generated from a master file containing the text of Claude McKay's 1922 collection of poems and related documents (other appearances of McKay's poems, reviews, and related material). The base text for this file is drawn from the item listed below. Claude McKay New York Harcourt, Brace, and Company 1922 71-72 To O.E.A. Your voice is the color of a robin's breast, And there's a sweet sob in it like rain—still rain in the night. Among the leaves of the trumpet-tree, close to his nest, The pea-dove sings, and each note thrills me with strange delight Like the words, wet with music, that well from your trembling throat. I'm afraid of your eyes, they're so bold, Searching me through, reading my thoughts, shining like gold. But sometimes they are gentle and soft like the dew on the lips of the eucharis Before the sun comes warm with his lover's kiss. You are sea-foam, pure with the star's loveliness, Not mortal, a flower, a fairy, too fair for the beauty-shorn earth. All wonderful things, all beautiful things, gave of their wealth to your birth. Oh I love you so much, not recking of passion, that I feel it is wrong! But men will love you, flower, fairy, non-mortal spirit burdened with flesh, Forever, life-long.