THE GARDEN OF JANUS 
39 
 
But in the end we lift the plumèd casque 
 Of the dead warrior ;   
Find no chaste corpse therein, but a soft-smiling whore. 
 
XIV 
 
Then I returned into myself, and took 
 All in my arms, God’s universe :   
Crushed its black juice out, while His anger shook 
 His dumbness pregnant with a curse. 
I made me ink, and in a little book 
 I wrote one word 
That God himself, the adder of Thought, had never heard. 
 
XV 
 
It detonated.  Nature, God, mankind 
 Like sulphur, nitre, charcoal, once 
Blended, in one annihilation blind 
 Were rent into a myriad of suns. 
Yea !  all the mighty fabric of a Mind 
 Stood in the abyss, 
Belching a Law for That more awful than for This. 
 
XVI 
 
Vain was the toil.  So then I left the wood 
 And came unto the still black sea, 
That oily monster of beatitude !   
 (Hath Thee for Me, and Me for Thee !) 
There as I stood, a mask of solitude 
 Hiding a face 
Wried as a satyr’s, rolled that ocean into space.