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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 7
…rifying 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 hear, And must not stamp on the snake, because, forsooth This was my love, my peace, my faith, my truth, The rosebud of my youth…
1910 · PDF PAGE 5
…ed 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 than Lebanon And all the flowers and honey and spice thereof Ripe for my soul’s kiss, eagerly to cull, Now like a corpse three weeks drowned, swollen by sun And water and vermin. There she sways and stares, And with the jaw dropped all awry—first swears, Then lurches ; then she slobbers unctuously : “ I am not old : I am quite beautiful ; How have I lost your love ? ” Pitiful ! Pitiful ! Pitiful ! This i…
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
…is 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 nightingale. I am so wrecked, so rent That one seems brag, the other sentiment. I cannot leave the present ; I will not pose There lies the rotten rose And stinks. That is the truth ; the rest is gloss. My loss was total loss. So close that rose lay to my heart, its fall Was the catastrophe of all.