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Page 1 of 11910 · PDF PAGE 5
ROSA DECIDUA 3 My soul to say it—all a man’s Delight. Come, look at it ! This leaden skin With ochre staining its amorphous grey ; All that elastic brilliance passed away ; Minute invading wrinkles where the flesh Is soaked away by the foul thing within Her soul ; the bloom so faint and fresh Smudged to a smoky glow as one may see At sunset in the Factory lands ; the lips Thinned and their colour sickened into slate ; The eyes like common glass ; the hair’s gloss dull ; The muscles gone, all pendulous with fat ; The breath that was more sweet t…
1910 · PDF PAGE 11
…f a ruined city Upon the flagstones. Not one petal clings Upon the stalk of life or memory. Stain Not one pale thought with blushes ; my soul’s dead As a corpse flung out of the tideway on The stinking flats of London mud. The springs Are dry beyond appeal ; dull grey like lead (And heavier) is my soul’s carrion. If she came pleasing now, pure passionate, and sane, I would not take her back again.
1910 · PDF PAGE 9
…shade, gall, orpiment, Jews’ hearts, Old women’s tongues, by monstrous arts ; But this my poison drips, without endeavour, From the mere soul of the world’s rose ! What alchemy of hell this ronyon Venus has skill of ! Wonder that I live ! This has been like a bag-pipe drone to wail Its monotone through high, low, fast and slow. It has been like a secret cancer, Forcing all servants of the life to give Their work to the usurper ; all its themes assail The main word Life ; they build their archipelago Of poison in each sea where life was holy. Th…
1910 · PDF PAGE 3
… And utterly corrupt is she That was the queen-flower unexampled In gardens goodlier than Arcady. O Thou ! whose body was my lyre, whose soul Lay on my mouth like a live coal ! This time thou hearest not my song ; thine ears Are stopped with worse than death ; And all this wasted breath Of mine—those songs of six most memorable years Of ecstasy and agony—may not attain To charm thy being into love again. . . .
1910 · PDF PAGE 13
ROSA DECIDUA 11 Now call me callous ! Pass me, prigs, and sneer At the base soul that could not bear its cross ! I say that infinite loss is infinite loss, That tears are trivial, tears are happiness, That this blind ache is God’s last punishment For love ; that all things in that one thing shent Are damned, that had I loved her less I could have prated in some honeyed strain. Taking a subtle pleasure in my pain. It is my bulk, the mass of my intent, That makes the ruin abject. I had sung Some partial earthquake ; here the universe Crashes with…
1910 · PDF PAGE 6
…rant to himself, insidious And cunning as some sordid sorceress ; Incapable of action or control, Yet a black gulph to drown so strong a soul ! . . . He lay close curled within my rose’s heart. There is no blame ; yet what avails all art ? See ! I reel back beneath the blow of her breath As she comes smiling to me : that disgust Changes her drunken lust Into a shriek of hate—half conscious still (Beneath the obsession of the will) Of all she was—before her death, her death ! So hell boils over in her, and she rages —It seems through countless a…
1910 · PDF PAGE 10
…s Here crushed, there rose the stronger for the pressure That gave it purchase ; keener flamed the fires In its eyes triumphant. Now its soul asserts Its master-pleasure ; The worm exerts Its adult might, and in one bout The spine snaps of that child of Love and Pity, And mangled he falls out Of the fight. Just so child Hercules Strangled two serpents in his pretty Red fists, achieved twelve labours, won to ease, And was done down to death and madness by The subtle poison that himself distilled. So all the God in life is chilled To a corpse. Th…
1910 · PDF PAGE 12
…erness and pain, Broad lilied meers Lying in a lonely leafless forest Silent and motionless beneath the moon. I feel my weakness, O thou soul that soarest Into a heaven beyond imagining On the unfaltering wing. Of the magic swan ! I know this tune Should swell to a strong note, a triumph note Blared through a trumpet’s throat To tell the world I am no coward, or else Sob in sweet minor, soft as Asmodel’s Chant to the nightingale. I am so wrecked, so rent That one seems brag, the other sentiment. I cannot leave the present ; I will not pose Ther…