Clouds Without Water

I] Save death alone! I see no happy end, No happy end for this divine beginning. Child! let us front a fate too ill to mend, Take joy in suffering for the sake of sinning. Ay! from your lips I pluck the purple seed Of that pomegranate sleek Persephone Tasted in hell; the irrevocable deed I do, and it is done. Naught else could be For us, the chosen of so severe a god To act so high a tragedy, the elect To suffer so, and so rejoice, the rod And scourge ofourown shame, thegilt and decked Oxen that go to our own sacrifice At our own consecrated shrine of vice. Il Over the desert ocean of distress Wereach pale eager hands that quiver and bleed With life of these our hearts that surge and stress In agony of the meditated deed. For in the little coppice by the gate Wherein I drew you shy and sly, and kissed Yourlips, your hushed “TI love you” smooth and straight Sweeping to wrap us in the glittering mist Of hell that holds us — even there I heard The lacerating laugh of fate ring out, The dog-faced god pronounce the mantic word, And saw the avengers gather round about Our love. The Moirae neither break nor bend ; The Erinyes hunt us to — no happy end.