He is a priest;
He feeds the dead;
He sings the feast;
He veils his head;
The words are dread
In morning mist,
But the wine is red
In the Eucharist.
Red as the east
With sunlight spread
Like a bleeding beast
On a purple bed.
O Someone fled
From an April tryst,
Were your lips fed
In the Eucharist?
I, at least,
When the voice of lead
Sank down and ceased,
Knew the things he said.
That the god who bled,
And the god we kissed,
Shall never wed
In the Eucharist.
Spring, give the bread
We sought and missed,
And wine unshed
In the Eucharist.
Paris, 1919
VI
Through hissing snow, through rain, through many hundred Mays,
Contorted in Promethean jest, the gargoyles sit,
And watch the crowds pursue the charted ways,
Whose source is birth, whose end they only know.
Charms borrowed from the loveliest of hells,
And from the earth, a rhapsody of wit,
They hear the sacramental bells
Chime through the towers, and they smile.
Smile on the insects in the square below,
Smile on the stars that kiss the infinite,
And, when the clouds hang low, they gaily spout
Grey water on the heads of the devout
That gather, whispering, in the sabbath street.
O gargoyles! was the vinegar and bile
So bitter? Was the eucharist so sweet?
Paris, 1919
VII
Gods dine on prayer and sacred song,
And go to sleep between;
The gods have slumbered long;
The gods are getting lean.