The Winged Beetle

83 DISAPPOINTMENT (AN ESSAY IN TACTICS) “ A FEMALE eunuch-a stale courtesan With a Jew’s hook, fat lips, and goggle eyes Wrinkled with grime and lust—so any man May maul you ; there’s a scarcity of vice ! A woman’s soul is in her ovaries ; Cut those, that flies. O salt and shallow pan Of verminous moisture !—bathe in thee, forsooth ? Age and consummate pox, avoid my youth ! ” I would have loved you—so I love to love— Wrapped you in beauty ! Lucid gauze of rime Had made your limbs go glimmering down through time, A gracious ghost ; the soiled and draggled dove Of Venus should be spurned, and you, my swan, Superbly floated on the giant stream Of fame, its crown and culmination, dream Most inaccessible, meditated on In vain by the world’s greatest lovers. Yet Your lazy lewdness happens to forget