180
THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY GHOST
Not altogether: in my patchwork brain
Some rag of passion tears its woof asunder.
Strange, that its own insatiable pain
Should find an opiate in her eyes of wonder !
Yes, though I hate her well enough to kill,
I know that then my soul would love her
still.
THE SONNET.
I,
THE solemn hour, and the magnetic swoon
Of midnight in a poet’s lonely hall !
Grave spirits answer (angels if he call)
The invocations of his lofty tune.
Thus in his measures nature craves the boon
To be reflected ; and his rhymes appal
Or charm mankind as tides that flow or
fall,
Waxes or wanes the tempestival moon.
Her course is
tether.
Waxes the eightfold ecstasy ; exceeds
The minor sestet, where some passion bleeds
Or truth discourses: or eclipse may
end,
Proof against thought ; but if man com-
prehend
The stars in all their stations sing together.
measured in the sonnet’s
Il.
What power or fascination can there lie
In this fair garden of the straight-kept
rows,
sonnet ?
knows
Why, having written in mere ecstasy
One sonnet-thought, the metre cannot dic
But urges, but compels me to compose
More and still more,! and still my spirit
The Surely some archange]
FCS
Striving up glittering steeps of symphony.
1 This is a singular psychological fact.
There is an angel who is guardian.
Surely her wings are rosy, and her feet
Black as the wind of frost ; but oh! her
face !
Whoso may know it is no more a man,
But walks with God, and sees the Lady
sweet
Whose body was the vehicle of yrace.
WEDLOCK.
A SONNET.
I saw the Russian peasants 1! build a ring
Of glowing embers of the bubbling pine.
In the green heart o’ the salamander line
They scatter roses. Now the youngsters
spring
Within, who with hard-shut eyes hope to bring
Irom out the fiery circle one divine
Blossom of rose, as from a poisonous mine
Gold comes to gird the palace of a king.
Envious I sprang—and found the last rose
gone. )
So in the fiery ring of wedlock, blind,
Mad, one may leap, no rose perhaps to
find
(Or, if no rose, good fortune finds no thorn),
But—mark the difference—palpable and
plain :
Kose or no rose, one leaps not out again.
SONNET FOR GERALD KELLY'’S
DRAWING OF JEZEBEL.
irr up thine head, disastrous Jezebel !
Fire and black stars are melted in thine
hair
That curls to Hell, as in Satanic prayer;
Thy mouth is heavy with its riper smell
Than clustered pomegranates beside a well ;
The cruel savour of thy lust lies there,
That blood may tinge thy kisses unaware
To fill thy children with the hope of Fell.
1 In my mind’s eve, Horatio. The story.
iS a pretty fiction.