White Stains

A JEALOUS LOVER 43 Ripples break foamless, where the golden coasts Echo their mellow cadence. Such delight Is on me I would fain sigh into sleep Until my love comes forth to dream with me Of silent words of love and peopled stars Where we may live and love and never weep Nor yet be weary. The last ruby bars Are sunk beneath the sea. The shadows creep More on me as I quicken with desire My love is all of gold, my faith is deep Lit with my heart’s imperishable fire. 3 Pale spectres of the stars, corpse-lights, bad-ghosts Sicken the icy glamour of the moon Upon the vacant earth ; and where the sea Marshals sepulchral billows, obscene hosts Of harpies gibber weirdly. I should swoon For the silence, rolled not some dread minstrelsy In fearful anguish on the shuddering air, Breathing out terror and lightning to the night That wildly echoes back Hell’s venomous spite, And shrieks aloud the watchword of despair To draw each painracked nerve more tense and gray