IV
Spit in my face! I love you. Clench your fists
And beat me! Still, | love you. Let your eyes
Like fiery opals or mad amethysts
Curse me! I love you. Let your anger rise
cAnd with your teeth tear bleeding bits of flesh
Out of my body — kill me if you can!
T love you. I will have you fair and fresh,
A maenad maiden maddening for a man.
Ay ! you shall weary in the erotic craving !
Pil have you panting —aching to the marrow —
Exhausted, but a maiden (Lesbia raving :
" Catullus brings a song and not a sparrow "’)
Famished with love, fed full with love, your soul
Still on the threshold of the unenvied goal,
- 70 on
The goal of love is gotten not of these
White-blooded fools that haste and marry and tire.
They grasp and break their bubble ecstasies;
We know desire the secret of desire.
We have the wisdom of the saints of old
Who know that what divinely is begun
Glows from dawn's grey to noon’s deliberate gold
Darkens to crimson — and day's race is run.
For us the glamour of the dawn suborning,
We escape the enervating heat of noon :
We hear Astarte for Adonis mourning,
And close our lover’s calendar at June.
Ah, Lola! but we suffer. Hell's own worm
Aches less than this, and hath an earlier term.