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| FROM the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus of nebulous noonshine, | |
| Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear of the flies as they float, | |
| Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic miraculous moonshine, | |
| These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten with sobs from the throat? | |
| Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor’s appalled agitation, | 5 |
| Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise of pride in the past; | |
| Flushed with the famishing fulness of fever that reddens with radiance of rathe recreation, | |
| Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of the gloaming when ghosts go aghast? | |
| Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the temples of terror, | |
| Strained as the sinews yet strenuous with strife of the dead who is dumb as the dust-heaps of death: | 10 |
| Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite error, | |
| Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude’s breath. | |
| Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul of our senses | |
| Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance and sound of a sigh; | |
| Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses— | 15 |
| Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day when we die. | |
| Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as it may be, | |
| While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of men’s rapiers resigned to the rod; | |
| Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing bulk of a balm-breathing baby, | |
| As they grope through the grave-yards of creeds, under skies growing green at a groan for the grimness of God. | 20 |
| Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old and its binding is blacker than bluer: | |
| Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews are the wine of the blood-shed of things; | |
| Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is freed from the fangs that pursue her, | |
| Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt that has harried the kernel of kings. | |
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