The Equinox (Volume I, Number IX)

THE EQUINOX Mine awful Destiny :— “To watch for ever. For ever watch, nor see the blind endeavour Of battling with the soul that wills Eclipse. “ Ever to know. And yet to know not ever The thing that irks thee most, how to dissever Thy Self from the blind wraith that watches thee. “The deed undone, that is before thee ever ! There is No Tig, thou canst forget it never, The Thing Undone is as the Thing Before. An endless chain, they stretch before thee, ever Mocking thy soul with purblind hopes that shiver As salt sea-spray on ice-bound rocks beneath. “Laucu! For I bid thee laugh. I bid thee mangle These unborn babes of thine, These hopes that dangle Like fond frail lilies o’er a lost lagoon: Witch-tress of innocence it sure would tangle In subtler mesh than those strange weeds that strangle Lost swimmers in the foul Sargasso Sea!” I shut me up. I builded me a Tower To hide me from the laughter of the world. I said: ‘They shall not lure me from my bower To where their love, a lecherous snake, is curled : 208