Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions
     Their visionaries darkly reconcile
At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions
     Through the same hell of penance may beguile
Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast;
Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.

LI

THE SOUL OF AGE

I have seen delicate aged women wrought
     Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past
By the wise vigils of forgiving thought
     Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last.
So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched
     Like an Etruscan mirror one has found
In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched
     With precious patinas, a various round
Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald,
     Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls,
Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled
     Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls,
And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy,
O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"

LI I

HYPNEROTOMACHIA

Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity,
     Some amethystine day at last will be,
When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city
     Shall be like wonders on a tapestry;
And we shall touch between tired orisons
     The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,—
Then gaze across the falling Avalons,
     The resignations of autumnal things,
And see among the pointed cypresses
     The one god left, the smiling perverse god,
The Love that will not leave the loverless,
     Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,—
Until these twain become as one, and all
The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.

LIII

THE REVOLT

Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate
     Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens
Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate,
     Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes
Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings,
     If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed
Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things
     Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud.
Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage!
     Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth,
These penitential usages of age
     That expiate proud cruelties of youth,
And bring thee to the last and perfect art,
To love the lovely with a selfless heart?

LIV

AFTER MANY YEARS

By mute communions and by salt sad kisses,
     By Pity's webs that still with fiery strands
Wove us together, by the unplumbed abysses
     Where we have gazed and never loosened hands,
By holy water we have given each other
     At Beauty's blessed doors, and by the hearts
Of sweet Delight and Agony her brother,
     By bright new marriages in all great arts,
By the rare wisdom like miraculous amber
     Won by the desolate grey sound of tears,
By wedding-music of the flute and tambour
     Prevailing o'er Time's cruel plot of years,
By all the proud prayers granted and denied us,
Fate has no sword at all that can divide us.

LV

TREASURE

Not mine the silver ride of the redeemer,
     Not mine the secret vision of the saint,
Not mine the martyrdoms of Truth's dark dreamer
     Nor bitter beatitudes of Art. O quaint
Undoing of youth's horoscope! No splendours
     Nor laurels, nor wisdom in a myrrhine bowl!
Here is the treasure that the past surrenders,
     A spoil of roses coffered in the soul,—
Much like another woman's! Rare perfumes
     And cleaving thorns, faded pathetic store
Of kisses and sighs, would those heroic dooms
     I craved of old have yet enriched me more?
I have not dwelt in Galilee nor Tyre
Nor Athens. But I have my heart's desire.

LVI

THE SOUL TO THE BODY

I know thou hast a secret of thine own
     Which I desire. But once I broke with thee
And walked among the asphodel alone:
     Therefore thou wilt reserve this reverie,
Like sumptuous flame closed up in alabaster.
     They half betray, these curious magian hands:
Faint music of thy breast has throbbed the faster,
     If I have touched it with my charming-wands.
And yet,—the wonder any woman knows
     Thou dost deny the proud Soul that has fed
Among the lilies of the White Eros.—
     Ere I go down among the witless Dead
Give, give the secret, for my bliss or rue,
Lest lack of that should craze my wisdom through.

LVII

THE IRONIST

Among high gods the absolute ironist
     Is Love. Therefore, when some cleft lightning mocks
Thine arrogant rapture, sad idealist,
     Admire the wild play of his paradox.
Great satires of reversal have astounded
     His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident
Before an idol in their image are hounded
     Through comedies of disillusionment.
Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine,
     Not any mage of Epipsychidion
Can the true nature of the god divine.
     Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne,
Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best
The incomparable anguish of his jest.

LVIII

IN VAIN

I said: "Confession's bitter cautery
     Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill."
Natheless, the wounded wasting malady
     Is her unexorcised sad sovran still.
Oh! that alembic fever of interwed
     Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue!
As soon as my sincerest words are said
     And heard they seem apostate and untrue.
For only speech more richly dubious
     Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast,
Than lighted incense more miraculous
     With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest
The morbid beauty of that wasting ill
Whereof I am the cureless lover still.

LIX

RESERVATIONS

Though cold clear cruelties like diamond
     Burthen this silken text of dim surmise,
Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond
     If one but look at me with stricken eyes.
If like a herald I have blazoned Pride,
     I am Humility's own renegade.
For fruits of good and evil have I sighed?
     If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed.
Though the wroth soul may excommunicate
     Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife
Of earthy and heavenly elements create
     Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life
Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows
That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.