Whose painted laughter cracks the gilded sky
Of this flat empery
That has no soil where any flower may root,
Nor rest for weary foot,
But endless leagues of mirror: such the ground
That no horizons bound,—
Carved topaz water;—sound a mirror seems!
O! nakedness of dreams
Beneath the blinding radiance of hot skies
Where no sun lives or dies.
. . .
Now that the dusty, creaking curtain, Day,
Is folded, laid away,
Each masked dancer is both piercèd Heart
And Dream, its poiniard.
Small winds creep from Infinity.... A flame
Our blown hair, white as shame.
Those seeds of worlds, the stars, are nought but blown
Red tinsel from a Clown;
The candles, living things to dance and pry:
Out! hard Reality!