The Winged Beetle

IN MANU DOMINÆ 169 She hath divers jewels crusted on To her rings’ graven obscenities, Like elfin eyes, the malison Of a basilisk cockatrice ! She hath a cold, an ardent gleam In the staring eyes of her ; She weaves a witch-web of dank dream Before her worshipper ; Her hand allures him to its theme : Sceptre to sepulchre ! So cold, so chaste, so sombre glows The purpose of her cypress glance ! A sphinx set up amid the snows, An Attis frozen in his dance, Is this unnatural god that knows No man’s inheritance. So with a strange Circean smile She bends herself and moves With a vile, a calculated wile In the unfamiliar grooves, Whose horror hath so great a guile That her hates pass for loves. Within the gold bars of her rings She grips the god as in a vice.