The Winged Beetle

115 THE ARCHÆOLOGIST The carmined lips of your moustachioed mouth ; The fading fires in your debauched grey eyes With the black grooves about them, each a trench Where some dead soldier rots, a sterile stench— All of you, ripe and rotten, athwart the lies Of paint and powder, false fanfares of youth That blare, yet passionate ache their tongue were true— Hag of the pit, what should I make of you ? I will legitimize the bastard spell ! Take all your falsehood, weld it with my force. Now then, Canidia, match thy miracle With mine, old medlar ! Though the reek of hell Gush from thy gorge, I hold my knightly course, Dragon ! I love thee, and I love thee well Who am like a shipwrecked sailor that should skry On the horizon some scarred citadel Or, smoking still, a volcan threat the sky, Or hairy with burnt forests, wracked and rent, Some ruin of an earthquaked continent ! It is not love, but worship most religious, This abject me, this wallowing at thy knees !