Clouds Without Water

XII So in this agony of enforcéd silence The sober song breaks to a phrenzied scream ; The shattering brain admits the mad god’s violence, And wild things course as in an evil dream : Devils and dancers, druid rites and dread, Horrible symbols scarred across the sky, Invisible terrors of the quick and dead, Impossible phantoms in mad revelry Conjoined in spinthriae of bestial form, Human-faced toads, and serpent-headed women, All lashed and slashed by the all-wandering storm Caricature of all things holy and human — —- Such are the discords that absolve the strain As this wild threnody dissolves the brain. XIII Forgive me, o my holy and happy maid, Lola, sweet Lola, for the imagination Of all things monstrous that your soul dismayed Reads on the palimpsest of my elation. Simple and sweet and chaste our love is ever, And these its wild and mystic characters That rage and storm in impotent endeavour To unveil our glory to our worshippers. Lola, dear Lola, mystic maiden o’ mine, Let us not mingle with the ribald rout That throng our temple. Close, Palladian shrine, With our reverberate glory rayed about! Abide within — with me! Let silence sever This velvet now’ from that unclothed ’for ever’!