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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 13
…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 one great curse, Whelming the singer and the song. My tongue Is palsied ; only this chaotic clash Of curses echoes the dire crash. And after all the roar, there steals a strain At last of tuneless, infinite pain ; And all my being is one throb Of anguish, and one inarticul…
1910 · PDF PAGE 6
…ct 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 no blame ; yet what avails all art ? See ! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath As she comes sm…
1910 · PDF PAGE 7
…, 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 flung with a curse ; and I must…
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
…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, O thou soul that soarest Into a heaven beyond imagining On the unfaltering wing. Of the magic swan ! I know this tune Should swell to a strong note, a triumph note Blared through a trumpet’s throat To tell the world I am no coward, or else Sob in sweet minor, soft as Asmodel’s Chant to the nig…