PROLOGUE x1
The scarlet vesture and the crimson skin!
As Aphrodite clove,
The foam, incarnate Love,
Maiden, as light leaps the dawn-gardens in,
So in the Love and Light,
Life slain, yet infinite,
The God-Man’s night,
Leaps pure the Soul rearisen from the embrace
of Sin. |
Yet, in the terror of that Breast, abides
So sweet and deadly a device, a lure
Deep in the blood and poison of her sides,
Swart, lean, and leprous, that her stings endure.
Even the soul of grace
Abideth not her face
Without vague longing, infinite desire,
Stronger because suppressed,
Unto the wide black breast,
The lips incarnate of blood, flesh, and fire,
So to slip down between
Thighs vast and epicene,
Morose and lean,
To that unnameable morass, the ultimate mire.
Wherefore behoves the Soul that leaps divine,
Even beholding, darkly in a mirror,
The face of God, to sink before His Shrine.
Weeping: O Beauty, Majesty, and Terror,
Wisdom and Mind and Soul,
Crown simplex, Mighty Whole,