Oracles

88 VENUS Buried my heart in thy sorrow, cast down my soul at thy knees. Thou, thou hast left me no morrow. Days and desires, what are these ? Nay, I have torn from my breast passion and love and despair : Sought in thy palaces rest, sleep that awaited me there ; Sleep that awaits me in vain : I have done with the hope of things ; Passion and pleasure and pain have stung me, and lost their stings. Only abides there a hollow, void as the heart of the earth. Echo may find it and follow, dead from the day of her birth. Life, of itself not insatiate ; death, not presuming to be ; Share me intense and emaciate, waste me, are nothing to me. Still in the desolate place, still in the bosom that was Even as a veil for thy face, thy face in a breathed-on glass, Hangs there a vulture, and tears with a beak of iron and fire. I know not his name, for he wears no feathers of my desire. It is thou, it is thou, lone maiden ! My heart is a bird that flies Far into the azure laden with love-lorn songs and cries. O Goddess of Nature and Love ! Thyself is the lover I see. But thou art in the above, and thy kiss is not for me.