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6 matching pages
Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 13
… 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 one great curse, Whelmi…
1910 · PDF PAGE 7
…e 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 hear, And must not stamp on the snake, because, forsooth This was my love, my peace, my faith,…
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 5
…ously : “ I am not old : I am quite beautiful ; How have I lost your love ? ” Pitiful ! Pitiful ! Pitiful ! This is no tragedy of little tears. This worm was in her blood Lurking for thrice five years, And now I see him—that old slime that leers Where Bacchus smiles, that evil and averse God that is wholly curse,
1910 · PDF PAGE 8
… But I have hung From the day of infinite loss Watching her degradation into dung Three years. Three years ! And now who asks me to shed tears ?
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
…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, O thou soul that soarest Into a heaven beyond imagining On the unfaltering wing. Of the magic swan ! I know this tune …