The Winged Beetle

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.