H.D. describes a young man as if he were a carved statue or an athlete frozen after a Greek contest. The speaker moves over his body with close, admiring attention, comparing his limbs and features to rock, worn brass, cypress, myrtle, and white-ash. The tone is reverent and quietly erotic: the man is “rigid and mighty,” with arms like fire, and he seems both human and godlike. The mood is still, luminous, and intense, like looking at something beautiful and untouchable. Nature and metal fuse with his flesh, making him feel timeless and remote. The speaker is not just describing him but almost worshipping him, turning a living body into art.
The Contest — Summary
Your stature is modelled with straight tool-edge: you are chiselled like rocks that are eaten into by the sea. With the turn and grasp of your wrist and the chords' stretch, there is a glint like worn brass. The ridge of your breast is taut, and under each the shadow is sharp, and between the clenched muscles of your slender hips. From the circle of your cropped hair there is light, and about your male torse and the foot-arch and the straight ankle. You stand rigid and mighty-- granite and the ore in rocks; a great band clasps your forehead and its heavy twists of gold. You are white--a limb of cypress bent under a weight of snow. You are splendid, your arms are fire; you have entered the hill-straits-- a sea treads upon the hill-slopes. Myrtle is about your head, you have bent and caught the spray: each leaf is sharp against the lift and furrow of your bound hair. The narcissus has copied the arch of your slight breast: your feet are citron-flowers, your knees, cut from white-ash, your thighs are rock-cistus. Your chin lifts straight from the hollow of your curved throat. Your shoulders are level-- they have melted rare silver for their breadth.