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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 3
ROSA DECIDUA “ O Rose, thou art sick ! The invisible worm That flies in the night In the howling storm Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.”—BLAKE. ROSE of the World ! If so, then what a world ! What worm at its red heart lay curled From the beginning ? Plucked and torn and trampled And utterly corrupt is she That was the queen-flower unexampled In gardens goodlier than Arcady. O Thou ! whose body was my lyre, whose soul Lay on my mouth like a live coal ! This time thou hearest not my song ; thin…
1910 · PDF PAGE 13
ROSA DECIDUA 11 Now call me callous ! Pass me, prigs, and sneer At the base soul that could not bear its cross ! I say that infinite loss is infinite loss, That tears are trivial, tears are happiness, That this blind ache is God’s last punishment For love ; that all things in that one thing shent Are damned, that had I loved her less I could have prated in some honeyed strain. Taking a subtle pleasure in my pain. It is my bulk, the mass of my intent, That makes the ruin abject. I had sung Some partial earthquake ; here the universe Crashes with…
1910 · PDF PAGE 6
4 ROSA DECIDUA As He is wholly blessing to the wise. This thing invertebrate, this sewer-flood, Compact of treacheries, meannesses, and lies, Horrible thirst, infamous beastliness, Dirt and disease, so sottish wallowing, Yet sensitive to pain so hideous That sometimes he appears all pain, all fear, All hate—so slavish, yet so fierce a king, A tyrant to himself, insidious And cunning as some sordid sorceress ; Incapable of action or control, Yet a black gulph to drown so strong a soul ! . . . He lay close curled within my rose’s heart. There is …
1910 · PDF PAGE 7
ROSA DECIDUA All understanding, that it bleeds again As a corpse should bleed at the murderer’s touch ! Then, not content, she must needs smutch All my past purifying pain, Turning all life to a thing fouler than Aught yet imaginable to man ! Who asks me for my tears ? She flings the body of my sweet dead child Into my face with hell’s own epitaph, Profanes that shrine Of infinite love and infinite loss, My empty shrine, the one shrine undefiled, My one close-claspèd cross— And hers as much as mine ! Profanes it with a hideous laugh And a lie f…
1910 · PDF PAGE 4
2 ROSA DECIDUA This is no tragedy of little tears. My brain is hard and cold ; there is no beat Of its blood ; there is no heat Of sacred fire upon my lips to sing. My heart is dead ; I say that name thrice over ; Rose !—Rose !—Rose !— Even as lover should call to lover ; There is no quickening, No flood, no fount that flows ; No water wells from the dead spring. My thoughts come singly, dry, contemptuous, Too cold for hate : all I can say is that they come From some dead sphere without me ; Singly they come, beats of a senseless drum Jarred by…
1910 · PDF PAGE 10
8 ROSA DECIDUA These years I have watched her fade, my masterful love And all-embracing pity strove Like athletes in an amorous bout to make Some child to tread upon that snake. But ever the worm slipped, escaped ; its spires Here crushed, there rose the stronger for the pressure That gave it purchase ; keener flamed the fires In its eyes triumphant. Now its soul asserts Its master-pleasure ; The worm exerts Its adult might, and in one bout The spine snaps of that child of Love and Pity, And mangled he falls out Of the fight. Just so child Herc…
1910 · PDF PAGE 5
ROSA DECIDUA 3 My soul to say it—all a man’s Delight. Come, look at it ! This leaden skin With ochre staining its amorphous grey ; All that elastic brilliance passed away ; Minute invading wrinkles where the flesh Is soaked away by the foul thing within Her soul ; the bloom so faint and fresh Smudged to a smoky glow as one may see At sunset in the Factory lands ; the lips Thinned and their colour sickened into slate ; The eyes like common glass ; the hair’s gloss dull ; The muscles gone, all pendulous with fat ; The breath that was more sweet t…
1910 · PDF PAGE 8
6 ROSA DECIDUA Were too like heaven—and heaven’s somehow to earn, No doubt—no way that I know ! Hell’s enough If hell would only burn And silence the one devil-word of love. Ay ! death slinks off. I have a child that claims my life To keep from knowledge of her mother’s fate, To keep from heritage thereof, To shield from the world’s scoff, To watch, stamp out the seeds of madness in her. God ! that hast held me back from hate, Be merciful to me a sinner And ward me, warding her ! As it is written : Excepting Adonai build the house, they labour …
1910 · PDF PAGE 11
ROSA DECIDUA 9 Of life that spring in me are fed Not even on the mire of her decay. They spring from other roots. Now I am cleansed of her, I am so to say A man part paralysed. One limb is dead In feeling as in motion. This remains To ask : Will all catch death—how soon ? This head Excites its miserable brains To think the word it knows by intellect To be the right word—pity ! Then reflect : “ Pitiful ! Pitiful ! most pitiful ! The pity of it ! Think of the love past, Blossoms too beautiful ! Think of the hardships conquered comrade-wise ! Thin…
1910 · PDF PAGE 9
ROSA DECIDUA 7 Let a man pierce my side, I warrant him nor blood nor water flows, But such a poison as Locusta never Distilled from toad, asp, viper, scorpion, Nightshade, gall, orpiment, Jews’ hearts, Old women’s tongues, by monstrous arts ; But this my poison drips, without endeavour, From the mere soul of the world’s rose ! What alchemy of hell this ronyon Venus has skill of ! Wonder that I live ! This has been like a bag-pipe drone to wail Its monotone through high, low, fast and slow. It has been like a secret cancer, Forcing all servants …
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
10 ROSA DECIDUA I am warned—that’s one word. Let my own back feel the lash ! All power of love is burnt right through to ash. Bray it in a mortar, mix with gall and ink, And give it to the children for a drink ! I’ll wait till she is dead, to bring those tears. I doubt not in the garden of my heart Whence she is torn that flowers will bloom again. May those be flowers of weeping, flowers of art. Flowers of great tenderness and pain, Broad lilied meers Lying in a lonely leafless forest Silent and motionless beneath the moon. I feel my weakness, …