Collected Works (Vol. III)

66 ROSA MUNDI, AND OTHER LOVE-SONGS I everywhere abide, and I control Olympian glories and the Pythian goal. What isle unfurls yonder life’s glimmering scroll? This be thy shrine, and all its splendours these ! Awake to dream! Two desolate nudities Woven through sculpture into ecstasies, XXIV. AuM! I unfold the tinted robe, My love's embroideries one by one, Unveil her glories, globe on globe, And find beneath the quivering probe A shaking skeleton. The smile of vermeil lips is past ; The skull’s black grin awhile remains ; The fallen flesh displays aghast Ribbed bars of bone: was Venus cast For this? What Mars attains? Where is the poesy that shed Its dewfall downward through her eyes? | Gaunt sockets stare from bony head. Moves she? Ah me! the living dead! The poet loves? He lies. Others perceive thee, peerless maid Broidered with beauty, starred and gemmed. With purity and light, arrayed In wit—like moonlight down a glade With flowers diademed. But I remember ; see the form Serene sink slowly to the dust. ’Tis but a date: the eventful storm Comes: then or now? What odds? They swarm, The winds: this breath, one gust. Ah! in the spiritual soul Is there no essence to abide When flesh and bone alike shall roll From shape to shape, from goal to goal, On time, the envious tide? All tire, all break, all pass. Beware False thirst, false trust, false doubts of truth Whilst thou art young, whilst thou art fair, Awake and see the sepulchre For beauty yawn and youth. Strive to cessation. Only this Is the true refuge: this alone Be implicit in our subtle kiss, Be master of the imperfect bliss We call perfection’s throne. Then, if we strive, not all in vain This vision of the barréd bones ; This knowledge in a poet’s brain, Daring to sing its own deep pain In shapeless semitones. Ah! if we strive, we attain. In sooth, The effort is of old begun, Or I had hardly seen the truth Beneath thy beauty and thy youth :— A mouldering skeleton ! XXV. I AM so sad and, being alone to-night, I will not see you. Self-disdain forbids. | I wander through the icy hermitage Of the populous streets, hoping. O might Some idle God look through his drowsy lids And will us happiness! Serene and sage Therefore I sit, as if I loved you not, And train a practised pen, and strive to art ; Accomplish art, and lose the art therein. I sit, a bitter Witenagemot,! The saint, the poet, the man : the lover’s heart Pleads at the bar. How should he hope to win? The saint is silent while the poet strings These futile follies, gives for bread a stone, And the man endures. The lover breaks the lyre. Its death-cry, agony, O agony! rings One name. The lover sits in hell alone Fondling the devil that men call desire. 1 The ancient parliament,of Britain.