Her form, blanched as the snowdrift,
So white, so white is it,
Recalleth some mystic cloister
Wherethrough do white bats flit.
Her hair drowns breasts and shoulders
In waves of bronze and gold,
Like the glint of brazen armour
In a battle picture of old.
Her eyes are dark with slumber,
Dark, dark are they as jet;
Her lips, so redly fashioned,
Whisper the word, “Forget!”
She mixes the cup nepenthe,
She sips of it, and then
She pledges the weakly sinning,
And the weaklings sin like men.
This is life’s wine audacious
That flameth in heart and brain.
In long, long draughts of the vintage
They pledge to her again.
The House of the Strange Woman
Whoso enters in,
Shall lose—but, ah, what matter
Beside what he shall win?
FLAMES
A FLAME shot out from the German line,
A flame shot up from Hell.
Satan spake, with a smile malign:
“Brothers, you have done well.”
A flame went up from the heart of France,
A flame from the sky down fell,
A Voice came out of Heaven’s expanse:
“Brothers, you have done well.”