The Winged Beetle

ROSA DECIDUA 133 As He is wholly blessing to the wise. This thing invertebrate, this sewer-flood, Compact of treacheries, meannesses, and lies, Horrible thirst, infamous beastliness, Dirt and disease, so sottish wallowing, Yet sensitive to pain so hideous That sometimes he appears all pain, all fear, All hate—so slavish, yet so fierce a king, A tyrant to himself, insidious And cunning as some sordid sorceress ; Incapable of action or control, Yet a black gulph to drown so strong a soul ! . . . He lay close curled within my rose’s heart. There is no blame ; yet what avails all art ? See ! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath As she comes smiling to me : that disgust Changes her drunken lust Into a shriek of hate—half conscious still (Beneath the obsession of the will) Of all she was—before her death, her death ! So hell boils over in her, and she rages —It seems through countless ages— With all the vile abuse That had degraded Glasgow’s grimiest stews, With all the knowledge of despair Striking me cunningly, striking everywhere, Mutilating the corpse of my dead love With such a savagery, Intensity above