Rosa Coeli

II OSE of the World ! Your mystic petals spread Like wings over my head. The tide of burning blood upon my face Drowns all the floating images That danced their spectre saraband In Bacchic race, phantastical embrace, Upon the sepulchres, the dizzy seas Of this my mind, Sabbatic rout that spanned These straits my soul ! Ay, they are dead and drowned (And damned, I doubt !) Ah God ! I am exhaust In the red moon’s holocaust ! God ! God ! The chasms secret and profound Suck down the porphyry flood Of your maniacal, ensorcelled blood That maddens and bewitches. My life is suffocated—now I swoon— I die ! I am in hell, red hell, red hell, Circles me closer ; all the soul’s afire As if the boreal moon With all the icy Lapland hags That shiver on ’s hibernal crags Were but a thin white shell Hoarding the seed of many a million suns, Giving its life up unto its desire— Out bursts the womb of my unguessed-at godhead ; 3 R