LI I

HYPNEROTOMACHIA

Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity, Some amethystine day at last will be, When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city Shall be like wonders on a tapestry; And we shall touch between tired orisons The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,— Then gaze across the falling Avalons, The resignations of autumnal things, And see among the pointed cypresses The one god left, the smiling perverse god, The Love that will not leave the loverless, Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,— Until these twain become as one, and all The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.

 

 

 

 

LIII

THE REVOLT

Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate, Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings, If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed Their beauty's sacred unisons?—Fair things Desire their revel-raiment be their shroud. Yet, fierce insurgent, cease vain wars to wage! Art thou so pure as to decline, forsooth, These penitential usages of age That expiate proud cruelties of youth, And bring thee to the last and perfect art, To love the lovely with a selfless heart?

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