I know them since my spirit had first in sight,

Clear as thy song's words or the live sun's light,

The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness

That held the fire eternal; eye and ear

Were as a god's to see, a god's to hear,

Through all his hours of daily and nightly chime,

The sundering of the two-edged spear of time:

[Pg 325]

The spear that pierces even the sevenfold shields

Of mightiest Memory, mother of all songs made,

And wastes all songs as roseleaves kissed and frayed

As here the harvest of the foam-flowered fields;

But thine the spear may waste not that he wields

Since first the God whose soul is man's live breath,

The sun whose face hath our sun's face for shade,

Put all the light of life and love and death

Too strong for life, but not for love too strong,

Where pain makes peace with pleasure in thy song,

And in thine heart, where love and song make strife,

Fire everlasting of eternal life.

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