THE EQUINOX
Mine awful Destiny :—
“To watch for ever.
For ever watch, nor see the blind endeavour
Of battling with the soul that wills Eclipse.
“ Ever to know.
And yet to know not ever
The thing that irks thee most, how to dissever
Thy Self from the blind wraith that watches thee.
“The deed undone, that is before thee ever !
There is No Tig, thou canst forget it never,
The Thing Undone is as the Thing Before.
An endless chain, they stretch before thee, ever
Mocking thy soul with purblind hopes that shiver
As salt sea-spray on ice-bound rocks beneath.
“Laucu! For I bid thee laugh.
I bid thee mangle
These unborn babes of thine,
These hopes that dangle
Like fond frail lilies o’er a lost lagoon:
Witch-tress of innocence it sure would tangle
In subtler mesh than those strange weeds that strangle
Lost swimmers in the foul Sargasso Sea!”
I shut me up. I builded me a Tower
To hide me from the laughter of the world.
I said: ‘They shall not lure me from my bower
To where their love, a lecherous snake, is curled :
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