Cherubim
with averted faces kept !
Nay ! This one secret
I suspect,
and gloat
Over the solemn purport of the dream
With subtle shuddering of joy, —and that
Keener
delight,
a sense of deadly fear !
This secret
: Thou art darkness in Thyself,
And evil wrapped
in light,
and ugliness
Vested in beauty !
Therefore
is my love
No petty passion like these country-folk's
:
No fertile glory
(as the Love of God)
:
But vast and barren as the winter sea,
Holding I know not what enormous soul
In its salt bitter bosom,
underneath
The iron waters and the serpent foam
;
Below, where sight and sound are set no more,
But only the intolerable weight
Of its own gloomy selfhood.
This am I :
This passion,
lion-mouthed
and adder-eyed.
A mass compressed, a glowing
central core.
Like molten metal
in the crucible !
Death's
secret
is some
sweetness
ultimate,
Sweeter than poison.
Ah ! My very words,
Chance phrases,
ravel out the tale for me—
Sweetness and death — poison and love.
Consider
How this same striving
to the Infinite,
Which I intend by "love," is likest to
That journey's
wonder to the womb of death :
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