Go your own ways. Who shall persuade me now
To look with high face for a star of hope?
Or up endeavor’s unsubduable slope
Advance a bosom of desire, and bow
A back of patience in a thankless task?
Alone beside the grave of love I ask,
Shalt thou? or thou?
Leave go my hands. Fain would I walk alone
The easy ways of silence and of sleep.
What though I go with eyes that can not weep,
And lips contracted with no uttered moan,
Through rocks and thorns, where every footprint bleeds,
A dead-sea path of desert night that leads
To one white stone!
Though sands be black and bitter black the sea,
Night lie before me and behind me night,
And God within far Heaven refuse to light
The consolation of the dawn for me,—
Between the shadowy bournes of Heaven and Hell,
It is enough love leaves my soul to dwell
With memory.
THE WORLD’S DESIRE
The roses of voluptuousness
Wreathe her dark locks and hide her eyes;
Her limbs are flower-like nakedness,
Wherethrough the fragrant blood doth press,
The blossom-blood of Paradise.
She stands with Lilith finger-tips,
With Lilith hands; and gathers up
The grapes of life; whose wine she sips,—
With Lilith-laughter-lightened lips,—
The soul, as from a curious cup.
What though she cast the cup away!
The empty bowl that flashed with wine!
Her lips’ wild kiss, that stained the clay,
Her hands’ hot clasp—shall these not stay,
That made its nothingness divine?
Through one again shall live the glow,
Immortalizing, of her touch;
And through the other, sweet to know
How life swept, flame once, ’neath the snow
Of her moon’d breasts—and this is much!
THE UNATTAINABLE
Mark thou! a shadow crowned with fire of hell.
Man holds her in his heart as night doth hold
The moonlight memories of day’s dead gold;
Or as a winter-withered asphodel
In its dead loveliness holds scents of old.
And looking on her, lo, he thinks ’tis well.