THE DECADENT
Among the virile hosts he passed along,
Conspicuous for an undetermined grace
Of sexless beauty. In his form and face
God’s mighty purpose somehow had gone wrong.
Then on his loom, he wove a careful song,
Of sensuous threads; a wordy web of lace
Wherein the primal passions of the race
And his own sins made wonder for the throng.
A little pen prick opened up a vein,
And gave the finished mesh a crimson blot—
The last consummate touch of studied art.
But those who knew strong passion and keen pain,
Looked through and through the pattern and found not
One single great emotion of the heart.
LORD, SPEAK AGAIN
When God had formed the Universe, He thought
Of all the marvels therein to be wrought
And to His aid then Motherhood was brought.
‘My lesser self, the feminine of Me,
She will go forth throughout all time,’ quoth He,
‘And make My world what I would have it be.
‘For I am weary, having laboured so,
And for a cycle of repose would go
Into that silence which but God may know.
‘Therefore I leave the rounding of My plan
To Motherhood; and that which I began
Let woman finish in perfecting man.
‘She is the soil: the human Mother Earth:
She is the sun, that calls the seed to earth.
She is the gardener, who knows its worth.
‘From Me, all seed, of any kind must spring.
Divine the growth such seed and soil will bring.
For all is Me, and I am everything.’