THE DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST Take your ivory Christ away: No dying god shall have my knee, While live gods breathe in this wild wind And shout from yonder dashing sea. No dying god shall have my knee, And shout from yonder dashing sea. When March brings back the Adonis flower No more the white processions meet, With incense to the risen lord, About the pillared temple's feet. No more the white processions meet, About the pillared temple's feet. From tusk of boar, from thrust of spear The dead rise not. At Eastertide The same sun dances on their graves— Love's darling and the Crucified. The dead rise not. At Eastertide Love's darling and the Crucified. Yet still the year's returning tide Flows greenly round each ruined plinth, Breaking on fallen shafts in foam Of crocus and of hyacinth: Flows greenly round each ruined plinth, Of crocus and of hyacinth: Tossing a spray of swallows high, To flutter lightly on the breeze And fleck with tiny spots of shade The sunshine on the broken frieze. To flutter lightly on the breeze The sunshine on the broken frieze. I know the gray-green asphodels Still sheet the dim Elysian mead, And ever by dark Lethe's wells The poppy sheds her ghostly seed. Still sheet the dim Elysian mead, The poppy sheds her ghostly seed. And once—O once!—when sunset lay Blood red across the winter sea, Where on the sands we drained our flasks And danced and cried our Evoe!
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