95 
 
 
 
 
 
LILITH 
 
THE stench of the gross goat is in my nostrils instead of 
the perfume of Artemis. 
I plucked the Virgin by his broidered chlamys . . . who 
could have guessed that hairy horror hidden ?   
I have got gall to be my drink, who mingled my wine 
with myrrh and musk and ambergris. 
I made my bed of silk and furs ;  and waking found I had 
swooned to sleep upon the midden. 
 
Ah !  Were those virgin lips of thine polluted with some 
rank savour of Sabbatic lust ?   
What spell turned thee, the maiden, to a monkey jibbering 
anitphonal blasphemies. 
To those chaste chants I wooed thee by, the moment that 
touching thee, my fruit dissolved to dust, 
Fair-seeming Sodom-apple !  Yet thy kisses smote all my 
spine to shuddering ecstasies !   
 
So strode the fool upon the mountain ridges, crying :  One 
step, and I attain the crest !   
Lo !  The loose cornice tricks him, and he tumbles, a 
mangled nothing, to the glacier. 
So the nun cries :  One effort and I conquer ;  I pass the 
gate, I win the appointed rest !   
And passing it discovers the foul body of Sin that waits to 
set his teeth in her.