Now—"Could I move, all humankind would pant
Even to think such effort! Could my songs
Cry out, dusked heaven would shudder at my wrongs!"
I moaned, and then looked flushed and palpitant
On Love's rapt face, that frenzied flagellant
Wielding with zeal the welting golden thongs.
JUDGMENT
Down the deep steps of stone through iron doors
I entered that red room and saw the rack,
And round the walls I saw them sit in black,
The immutable and urgent councillors.
My heart was clotted with an old remorse,
Despair a vulture fast upon my back.
I saw my body like an empty sack
Tossed disarticulate on grated floors.
But even a wilder wonder at this crime
Tried in the dungeon of my own grim life
Woke, as your memory awoke with tune
That crazed the very walls. I stared through Time
Like to a man who stands with smoking knife
Above his dead, and sees the rising moon.
UNFORGOTTEN
Wakening in the night, the pain that slumber
Strikes with her mace of silence dead and dumb
Loomed over me and, formless, said, "I come!
Bringing illusions lost beyond all number.
Rigid you lie, yet for a little cumber
This flaming world, where some die proudly, some
Glitter like granite, or dream millenium."
It left me toiled in mountainous clouds of umber.
I lay sustaining all the old emotion,
Numbed as beneath the blows of iron cars.
Then slowly, slowly some supreme devotion
Crept down, and drew me out of ageless wars,
Like a dear voice heard over darkened ocean
When all dim heaven is trembling into stars.
THE PALE DANCER
My heart's a still shore; all the golden sails are gone.
A pale, silver floor in the hugeness of dawn
My heart lies once more, and the little ripples beat
This small, idle tune, like the fall of elves' feet,
"Oh, come, airy dancer—come dance on us, Sweet!"
She comes like a breeze in the midnight of May.
The tumbling of the seas makes a tune far away.
She comes with closed eyes, with light footsteps she nears,
And she sings the low song that each lipping ripple hears.
"In love there is laughter, and after—come tears!"