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…Like a moss-guarded waterfall Across her ivory sleep ? A tender laugh most musical ? A sigh serenely deep ? She laughs in wordless swift desire A soft Thalassian tune ; Her eyelids glimmer with the fire That animates the moon ; Her chaste lips flame, as flames aspire Of poppies in mid-June. 15
…sing fire : Kisses made monstrous for their sterile storm Maddening with sea-sounds, as of lute or shawm Fluting and clashing in extreme desire ; The silly “ Thus far and no farther,” nigher Each hour to break (poor arbitrary form !) As each kiss bade our bodies wed and warm Give love one chance before its wave retire. Not so : this trial was the tiniest Man ever knew, confronted afterward With giant fears and passions ;—long to fight And last to yield a Maenad-swelling breast Unto a furious Dionysian horde Drunk not with wine, but with avengin…
…uick converse, love to love ; How the flame flickers of the ghost above, The spirit’s kiss ; the sleepless to-and-fro Movement of love’s desire too strong to know Or care for that it takes its substance of— As if life’s burden were not drear enough Or death’s deliverance not so far and slow. Our bodies almost perish, with one thought Crowned and completed, consecrate and shrined : A perfect temple of fine amber wrought, Whose shrine’s the body and whose lamp the mind. The heart is priest and sacrifice in one ; And, where it sinned or sorrowed, …
THE SECOND DAY “ Keep you in the rear of your affection Out of the shot and danger of desire.” Hamlet. I was so hopeless that I turned away And gave my love to foul oblivion, Shuttered my bosom’s window from the sun, Kindled a corpse-light and proclaimed “ The day ! ”; Lurked in Aeaean fens to elude the ray Whose beauty might disturb me : I did shun The onyx eyes that saw me not as one Possible even for a moment’s play. Thus I was tangled in some house of hell, Giving mine own soul’s beauty up to lust, Hoping to build some fort impregnable Agai…
…to pudency a rosier name When the long lashes drooped, and saintlier sighs Took softer meanings, till my arteries Throbbed with the glad desire that went and came. “ I charge you in the very name of love.” Quoth she : “ We have all day to steal below And snatch short kisses out of danger’s throat. Why beg you night : is not the day enough ?” But I : “ The night is panting and aglow to feel our hair distraught and limbs afloat.” 72
… I lay with her And with mere kisses sucked her soul away, And made my banquet of immortal dew, Demanding nothing but to minister To her desire until the dawn grew grey. 69
…eel the swollen veins below The knotted throat ; the ebb and flow Of blood, not milk, in breasts of fire ; Of deaths, not fluctuants, of desire ; Of molten lava that abides Deep in the vast volcanic sides ; Deep scars where kisses once bit in Below young mountains that be twin, Stigmata cruciform of sin, The diary of Messaline. The moving mountains crater-crowned ; The valleys deep and silver-bound ; The girdle treacherously wound ; One violet-crest mounded mole, 11
…eeing my life is by a serpent wrecked Of sore disease : but spare me, and reflect That in few months I die : but were I wed— O lover ! O desire discomfited ! I die at once : consider, and elect.” How could I otherwise than spare my wife ? With tender lips and fingers one strong kiss Swooned slave-wise even before the gate of bliss, No more : for I rose up and cursed my life, Hating the God that made us to dissever So soon so sweet a love, and that for ever. Ut. Canc. sublatum iri dixisse. Vae Capricorno ! (Author’s Note.) 58
…eel ; So from afar one central heat Sends the loud pulse to fever beat ; So from one crown and heart of fire Spring the vast phantoms of desire, Impossible and epicene, Familiar souls of Messaline. And as, when thunder broods afar Imperial destinies of war, Men see the haze and heat, and feel The sun’s rays like a shaft of steel, Seeing no sun ; even so the night Clouds that deep miracle from sight : Until this destiny be done Hangs the corona on the sun ; And I absorbed in those unclean Ghost-haunted veins of Messaline. 12
… As the frail cords of honour strain and slip. For in the midst of that tremendous tide The mighty vigour of a god was mine ! Drunk with desire, her lamentations died. The dove gave place a moment to the swine ! Rapturous draughts of madness ! Out she sighed Uttermost life’s love, and became a bride. Beneath the sonnet, in pencil, and feebler hand, are scrawled faintly the words : Alice ! Alice ! 68
…wer of the innermost fire ! O tune of my soul that encloses All life, the tempestuous lyre ! O dawn of my dawn that reposes and darts in desire ! And death and its portals are rifted, Life listens our kisses that weep ; Love hears, and his measure is shifted, Grows solemn and deadly and deep ; Love’s ship droops its sails and is drifted in silence to sleep. 51
…e yellow-haired girl with the stem of her short clay pipe. She added that he was dying. Curiosity, Compassion’s Siamese twin, prompted a desire to see the sufferer. The old lady rose, not without difficulty, lifted the curtain, and let it fall behind me as I entered the gloom which lay beyond. On a bed, in that half-fathomed twilight, big with the scent of joss-sticks smouldering in a saucer before a little bronze Buddha-rupa, lay a man, still young, the traces of rare beauty in his face, though worn with suffering and horrid with a week’s grow…