The Winged Beetle

132 ROSA DECIDUA My soul to say it—all a man’s Delight. Come, look at it ! This leaden skin With ochre staining its amorphous grey ; All that elastic brilliance passed away ; Minute invading wrinkles where the flesh Is soaked away by the foul thing within Her soul ; the bloom so faint and fresh Smudged to a smoky glow as one may see At sunset in the Factory lands ; the lips Thinned and their colour sickened into slate ; The eyes like common glass ; the hair’s gloss dull ; The muscles gone, all pendulous with fat ; The breath that was more sweet than Lebanon And all the flowers and honey and spice thereof Ripe for my soul’s kiss, eagerly to cull, Now like a corpse three weeks drowned, swollen by sun And water and vermin. There she sways and stares, And with the jaw dropped all awry—first swears, Then lurches ; then she slobbers unctuously : “ I am not old : I am quite beautiful ; How have I lost your love ? Pitiful ! Pitiful ! Pitiful ! This is no tragedy of little tears. This worm was in her blood Lurking for thrice five years, And now I see him—that old slime that leers Where Bacchus smiles, that evil and averse God that is wholly curse,