No longer from self-knowledge then exempted
Shall God the apple tasting Eve repeat
Thus altered, saying, “By the devil tempted
Through all these years I could and did not eat.”
Thus at the last shall Man and Maker pardon
Eve’s ancient wrong, seeing that, though He cursed,
Knowledge, alone of those who used the Garden
God was afraid of apples from the first.
Thereafter as it was in the beginning,
Before the spirit moved upon the deep,
There shall be no more sea and no more sinning
And God will share with his beloved sleep.
THE SKIES.
THOUGH the world tumble tier by tier,
Down, down the broken galleries,
By day the sun would shine as clear
By night the moon would ride her seas.
Though man and all was meant by men
Upon the empty air were spent,
Irrevocably Charles’s Wain
Would swing across the firmament.
So large they are and cool the skies;
God’s frozen breath in dreams, or worse:
Beautiful unsupported lies
That simulate a universe.
THREE EPITAPHS.
I. FLECKER.
YOU have made the golden journey. Samarkand
Is all about you, Flecker, and where you lie
How youth and her beauty perish in the sand
They are singing in the caravanserai.