The Mother’s Tragedy

EPILOGUE 109 Yet my heart looks to Madness as its mother, Remembering Who once caught me by the well ; And the strange loves of that misshapen Other, The feast of blood, the cold enchanted dell, Where fire was filtered up through earth to smother, Sick scents of hell. And that wild night when vine-leaves wooed and clustered Round my wild limbs, and like a woman I went Over the mountains — how the Northwind blustered !— And slew with them the beast, and was content. The madness. Oh! the dreadful light that lustred The main event. Ay! the wild whirlings in the woodland reaches; The ghastly smile upon the Stone God’s lip; The rigid tremors, anguish that beseeches From eye to eye fresh fervours of the whip ; The mounded moss below the swaying beeches— Kiss me and clip! Why! the old madness grows !—how feebly lying Smooth by this bay where waves are tender flowers. Winds, soft as the old kisses were, are sighing. Clouds drift across the sun for silken bowers. The moon is up—an hastening nymph! I, dying, Await the Hours.