The Winged Beetle

124 BELLADONNA My blood, and crunch my bones—mine agonies To build into the rapture of your eyes ! So then I have forgotten all the other. Only those eyes pursue me through the æon, Whether by God’s grace we love one another, Whether I weave an ode or blare a pæan. There is no help, my vampire and my mother ! But I am snared within those eyes Circean That blaze at me from wall, or wood, or well Their final knowledge of their final Hell. For there is no soul, none, beyond ours, suave sister, In the fierce light—the boon, the bane, the bliss, The bale !—our eyes are born to burn and blister And blast Love’s queen herself in their abyss. See ! the scarred cheek where our lips lightly kissed her ; We whose eyes kiss, the sacramental kiss ! The kiss whose lightest petal is a curse Fit to dissolve the ultimate universe. Then, let us make a child ! Shall he not be A flame of fire, a ringless ocean, a wind All-penetrating, a ten-branching tree, A height of spirit, an abyss of mind ? Shall we not veil our eyes, lest he should see The extreme secret in their soul confined And die ? Then let us also cease from seeing And wake the lusty whirlwind of our being !