Collected Works (Vol. I)

THE HONOURABLE ADULTERERS 99 Only our looks and trembling lips we dread, And the dear nimbus of a lover’s head, The dreamy splendour and the dim-delight That feels the fragrance fallen from the night, When soul to soul is locked, and eyes are wed, And lips not touched kiss secretly by sight. These things we fear, and move as in a mist One from the other, and we had not kissed. Only the perfume of her lips and hair Love’s angel wafted slowly to me there, And as I went like death away I wist Its savour faded, nor my soul aware. I turned and went away, away, away, Out of the night that was to me the day, And rode to meet the sun to hide in light The sorrow of the day that was the night. So I rode slowly in the morning gray, And all the meadows with the frost were white. And lo! between the mountains there uprose The winter sun; and all the forest glows, And the frost burns hke fire before my eyes, While the white breeze awoke with slum- berous sighs And stirred the branches of the pine; it knows, t surely knows how weary are the wise! Even my horse my sorrow understands, Would turn and bear me to those western lands ; In love would turn me back ; in love would bring My thirsty lips to the one perfect spring— My iron soul upon my trembling hands Tad its harsh will ; my bitterness was king. So verily long time I rode afar. My course was lighted by some gloomy star That boded evil, that I would not shun, But rather welcome, as the storm the sun, Lowering and red, a hurtful avatar, Whose fatal forehead like itself is dun It was no wonder when the second day Showed me a city on the desert way, Whose brazen gates were open, where within I saw a statue for a sign of sin, And saw the people come to it and pray, Before its mouth set open for a gin. And seeing me, a clamour rose among Their dwarfish crowds, whose barbarous harsh tongue Grated, a hateful sound ; they plucked me down, And mocked me through the highways of the town, And brought me where they sang to censers swung A grotesque hymn before her body brown. For Sin was like a woman, and her feet Shone, and her face was like the windy wheat ; Her eyes cold, Her bronze loins girdled with the sacred gold ; Her lips were large, and from afar how sweet ! Ilow fierce and purple for a kiss to hold! were keen and horrible and But somehow blood was black upon them; blood In stains and clots and splashes; and the mud Trampled around her by the souls that knelt, Worshipping where her false lewd body dwelt, Was dark and hateful ; and a sleepy flood Trickled therefrom as magic gums that melt. I had no care that hour for anything: Not for my love, not for myself; I cling Desperate to despair, as some to hope, Unheeding Saturn in their horoscope ; But I, despair is lord of me and king; But I, my thoughts tend ever to the rope.