88 
VENUS 
 
Buried my heart in thy sorrow, cast down my soul at thy 
knees. 
Thou, thou hast left me no morrow.  Days and desires, what 
are these ? 
 
Nay, I have torn from my breast passion and love and 
despair : 
Sought in thy palaces rest, sleep that awaited me there ; 
Sleep that awaits me in vain :  I have done with the hope 
of things ; 
Passion and pleasure and pain have stung me, and lost 
their stings. 
 
Only abides there a hollow, void as the heart of the earth. 
Echo may find it and follow, dead from the day of her birth. 
Life, of itself not insatiate ; death, not presuming to be ; 
Share me intense and emaciate, waste me, are nothing to 
me. 
 
Still in the desolate place, still in the bosom that was 
Even as a veil for thy face, thy face in a breathed-on glass, 
Hangs there a vulture, and tears with a beak of iron and fire. 
I know not his name, for he wears no feathers of my desire. 
 
It is thou, it is thou, lone maiden !  My heart is a bird that 
flies 
Far into the azure laden with love-lorn songs and cries. 
O Goddess of Nature and Love !  Thyself is the lover I see. 
But thou art in the above, and thy kiss is not for me.