Candle and the flame : poems / by George Sylvester Viereck [electronic text]

THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME

THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME

THY hands are like cool herbs that bring Balm to men's hearts, upon them laid; Thy lovely-petalled lips are made As any blossom of the spring. But in thine eyes there is a thing, O Love, that makes me half afraid.

For they are old, those eyes… They gleam Between the waking and the dream With antique wisdom, like a bright Lamp strangled by the temple's veil, That beckons to the acolyte Who prays with trembling lips and pale In the long watches of the night.

They are as old as Life. They were When proud Gomorrah reared its head A new-born city. They were there When in the places of the dead Men swathed the body of the Lord. They visioned Pa-Wak raise the wall Of China. They saw Carthage fall And marked the grim Hun lead his horde.

There is no secret anywhere Nor any joy or shame that lies Not writ somehow in those child-eyes Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise. Thou art the lad Endymion, And that great queen with spice and myrrh From Araby, whom Solomon Delighted, and the lust of her.

The legions marching from the sea With Caesar's cohorts sang of thee, How thy fair head was more to him Than all the land of Italy. Yea, in the old days thou wert she Who lured Mark Antony from home To death and Egypt, seeing he Lost love when he lost Rome.

Thou saw'st old Tubal strike the lyre, Yea, first for thee the poet hurled Defiance at God's starry choir! Thou art the romance and the fire, Thou art the pageant and the strife, The clamour, mounting high and higher, From all the lovers in the world To all the lords of love and life.

Through thy slow slumberous long lashes Across the languor of the face

The gleam of primal passion flashes That is as ancient as the race, But we that live a little space, Which when beholding feel in it The horror of the Infinite…

Perhaps the passions of mankind Are but the torches mystical Lit by some spirit-hand to find The dwelling of the Master-Mind That knows the secret of it all, In the great darkness and the wind.

We are the Candle, Love the Flame, Each little life-light flickers out, Love bides, immortally the same: When of life's fever we shall tire He will desert us, and the fire Rekindle new in prince or lout.

Twin-born of knowledge and of lust, He was before us, he shall be Indifferent still of thee and me, When shattered is life's golden cup, When thy young limbs are shrivelled up, And when my heart is turned to dust.

Nay, sweet, smile not to know at last That thou and I, or knave, or fool,

Are but the involitient tool Of some world-purpose vague and vast. No bar to passion's fury set, With monstrous poppies spice the wine: For only drunk are we divine, And only mad shall we forget!

THE PARROT

TO ALFRED RAU

O BIRD grotesque and garrulous, In green and scarlet liveried, Thy ceaseless prattle hides from us The secret of thy dream indeed. But in thine eyeball's mystic bead Are mirrored clear to them that read Vague, nameless longings, like the breed Of some exotic incubus.

Where is thy vision? Overseas? In some bright tropic far-off land Where chiding simians in tall trees Swing by luxurious breezes fanned, While at phantastic phallic feasts Brown women uncouth idols hail, And through the forest sounds the wail Of the fierce matings of wild beasts?

Or are thine other memories, Of other lives on other trees, Encasements in some previous flesh In far-off lost existences?

For, as the tiger leaves his spoor Upon the prairie, firm and sure Life writes itself upon the brain, The soul keeps count of loss and gain, And in the vibrant, living cells Of the small parrot's brain there dwells A sparkle of the flame benign That makes the human mind divine.

The self-same Life-Force fashions us: Its writings are the stars on high, Its transient mansions thou as I. Through Plato's mouth it speaks to us, Through the earth's vermin even thus. The heaving of a baby's breast And the gyrations of the sun To its omnipotence are one And make its meaning manifest.

We both are wanderers through all time Who, risen from the primal slime When God blew life into the dust, Press to some distant goal sublime. And often through the thin soul-crust Rush memories of an alien clime, Of gorgeous revels more robust Than any dream of hate or lust In the gilt cage upon us thrust, And visions strange beyond all rhyme.

The Life-Force with itself at war Moulds and remoulds us, blood and brain, Yet cannot quench us out again, And after every change we are. The soul-spark in all sentient things Illumes the night of death and brings, Remembered, immortality: Time cannot take thy soul from thee! All living things are one by kind, Heritors of the cosmic mind. Thus deemed the Prophet on whose knee The kitten slumbered peacefully, And surely good Saint Francis, he Who as his sister loved the hind.

THE PRISONING OF SONG

TO EDWARD J. WHEELER

THERE lay one weeping at Apollo's feet Whose tuneful throat was like a golden well. Her tears unutterably sweet Made music as they fell.

"Thee have I served, O Father, all my days, Yea, ere thy hand had made the lute-string and the lyre, Out of my heart I snatched the terror and.the fire, And with my body wrought thy perfect praise.

"I am the rapture of the nightingale Heavenward winging, The song in singing, Beauty audible.

"With rumbling thunder and discordance hideous The gods and stars shall tumble from the sky; But beauty's curve enmarbled lives in Phidias, And Homer's numbers cannot die.

"To them that are my sisters thou hast given Eternity of bronze and script and stone. I, only I, must perish, tempest-driven, In the great stillness where no moan Is heard, wind stirs, nor reed is blown."

Apollo wept."Most sweet, most delicate, Death fears that he might tarry at thy gate Too fond, too long, And that while listening he forget the throng Who call upon him with their piteous cries. Thy sweetness, hence, in every song Lives, and in each song dies."

He paused. Unlovely grief made dark His shining countenance, when, mark! There rose the proud Promethean race Untoo whose voice the thunders hark, Who sailing in a fragile bark Have seen the heavens face to face.

Their arms both lands and ocean span, They snare the lightning in a trice. Yea, by incredible device They prison sound in curious shells, Ad by these signs and miracles Proclaim the masterhood of man.

O listen, all men, and rejoice, For lo, Caruso's argent voiceEndures as granite, even so, And Garden's song, like Plato's thought, Or like a mighty structure wrought By Michael Angelo!

And when the land is perished, yea,When life forsakes us, and the rust Has eaten bard and roundelay,Still from the silence of the dust Shall rise the song of yesterday!

GERSUIND

SOME amorous demon wrought your limbs Hewn out of moonwhite ivory; Over your visage restlessly Flickers the semblance of a soul, And yet, queer wench, you are to me More monstrous than the evil hymns The black priest chants in mocery, With sound obscene and eyes that roll, Of the good Shepherd of the See.

Your voice is instant with a power, That, like thick incense, makes men mad. It is the voice the Tempter had, Who whispered in an evil hour To Judah's king and Magdalen, And cried aloud in Sodom's men For the two angels in the tower.

You smile upon me and your mouth Half opens like a great red flower Athirsting in the hot sun's drouth. Before men's scorn you will not cower,

Your spirit quails not, neither squirms, And yet your body is a bower Where unclean wishes crawl like worms.

Black meres— the eyes, beneath your lashes Dream, by life's fitful tide unstirred, Save when some quick priapic word Floods them with phantom lightning flashes Whereof the thunder is not heard. A thousand years of sick desire Crouch like a beast that snarling lies, Stung by some taunt to mortal ire, In the abysses of those eyes!

Yet when I gazed upon you, child, All bounds from us I fain had flung, And bathed with healing tears and mild, Your head so pitifully young. But you, not knowing, would have smiled And love's white roses smirched with dust, Seeing each nerve in you defiled Is vibrant with some nameless lust.

Lo! I have not the strength divine Of Him whose bare feet ruled the sea, To make your girl heart whole and free And drive the devils into swine.

You must unto your dying day Still walk unsolaced and alone, Yea, and beyond, when to the bone Your little breasts shall rot away.

Thus in the phosphorescent glow Of your corruption you shall lieUntil God's awful trumpets blow, And all the sleepers, row by row, Each with the other, two by two, Rise from their coffins, and the grave Spits forth the foulness that is you.

But in the universal spasm, When the apocalyptic chasm Engulfs the water and the land, Then I shall come and comfort you, Then I shall hold your shrunken hand The grave has bitten through and through, — With never nerve to, twitch or goad— And then perhaps you'll understand The kiss that I have not bestowed… And ere God's hosts are marshalled bright And the last dreaded veil withdrawn, I shall be with you in the night And pray until the doom of dawn.

NERO IN CAPRI

GO with the sun beyond the hill, For you and me there is no thrill In any rose of love or bud, Nor any quickening of the blood. Lo, from the tree of Good and Ill Each strangest fruit our hand has wrung, Lust's adder was around our throat, And on our lips the hissing tongue.

No wanton queen by Cupid's grace Shall snare me in her purple mesh, I take mine eyes from Helen's face, I tear my lips from Phryne's flesh. Not mine that martyr's ecstasy Who hellward for a kiss was hurled! The ancient passions of the world Quench not the bitter thirst of me.

The isles of Lesbos hide no dell Where bides a rapture strange or new, But white wan ghosts of dead sins dwell In Capri's grottoes monstrous blue. The books of Elephantis tell Only the fortunes that befell

The son of Hermes and of her Who wore the foam as vestiture, And how young Leda's heart would stir Beneath her plumèd paramour.

Stale is to me the thought thereof, Of this man's sin and that man's love. Ah, that the world had but one mouth To kiss it as a madman doth! Grant me the strength of all embraces In the five circles of the globe! Make mine each drop of blood that races, Clothe me with romance as a robe! Bring me the yearning of the dreams Of all the young men amorous! Bruise me with every breast that gleams Beneath some hell-sent incubus!

Let madness rise in one bold gust, And in the carnival of lust Heap fire on fire, and coal on coal, Join all things, thighs, and hips, and soul, Until at last the panting earth Shall tremble with conjugial mirth Like a drunk wanton; till desire, Heedless of scorpions and of rods, Shall toss his splendid mane of fire And smite your pale, anaemic gods!

Then, like a cyclopean brand That threatening rises from the deeps, My passion's embers newly fanned Shall be a flame that sings and leaps, With every bond of nature riven, And broken every gyve that bars, In the concupiscence of heaven, And in the incest of the stars!

A BALLAD OF MONTMARTRE

WITHIN the graveyard of Montmartre Where wreath on wreath is piled, Where Paris huddles to her breast Her genius like a child, The ghost of Heinrich Heine met The ghost of Oscar Wilde.

The wind was howling desolate, The moon's dead face shone bright; The ghost of Heinrich Heine hailed The sad wraith with delight: "Is it the slow worm's slimy touch That makes you walk the night?

"Or rankles still the bitter jibe Of fool and Pharisee, When angels wept that England's law Had nailed you to the Tree, When from her brow she tore the rose Of golden minstrelsy?"

Then spake the ghost of Oscar Wilde While shrill the night hawk cried:

"Sweet singer of the race that bare Him of the Wounded Side, (I loved them not on earth, but men Change somehow, having died).

"In Père La Chaise my head is laid,My coffin-bed is cool,The mound above my grave defies The scorn of knave and fool, But may God's mercy save me from The Psychopathic School!

"Tight though I draw my cerecloth, still I hear the din thereof When with sharp knife and argument They pierce my soul above, Because I drew from Shakespeare's heart The secret of his love…

"Cite not Krafft-Ebing, nor his host Of lepers in my aid, I was sufficient as God's flowers And everything He made; Yea, with the harvest of my song I face Him unafraid.

"The fruit of Life and Death is His; He shapes both core and rind…"

Cracked seemed and thin the golden voice, (The worm to none is kind), While through the graveyard of Montmartre Despairing howled the wind.

A BALLAD OF KING DAVID

AS David with Bath-Sheba lay, Both drunk with kisses long denied,The King, with quaking lips and gray, Beheld a spectre at his side That said no word nor went away.

Then to his leman spake the King,The ghostly presence challenging: "Bath-Sheba, erst, Uriah's wife,Thy lips are as the Cup of Life That holds the purplest wine of God, Too sweet for any underling."

"Yet," spake Bath-Sheba, sad of mien,"Why from thy visage went the sheenAs though thy troubled eye had seen A shadow, like a dead man's curse,Rise threatening from the mound terrene?"

"'Twas but the falling dusk, that fills The palace with phantastic ills. Uriah sleeps in alien sandsSoundly.'Tis not his ghost that stands,

Living or dead, or anything 'Twixt the King's pleasure and the King."

Bath-Sheba's glad heart rose, then fell: "Where is it that thy fancies dwell? Is there some maid in Israel Broad-hipped, with blue eyes like the sea, Whose mouth is like a honey-cell, And sweeter than the mouth of me?"

"The pressure of thy lips on mine Is exquisite like snow-cooled wine. Over the wasteness of my life Thy love is risen like a sun: All other loves that once seemed sweet Are seized by black oblivion."

Again upon the shadow-thing He gazed in silence, questioning. And lo! with quaint familiar ring A spectral voice addressed the King: "O David, David, Judah's swan! Why unto me dost thou this thing?" "Who art thou?" "I am Jonathan, My heart is like a wounded fawn."

"When in Saul's fierce anger, like a bull, Rose, by the Evil One made blind,

My love to thee was wonderful, Passing the love of womankind. Hast thou forgotten everything My heart aches in remembering? Is such the harvest of our springOf war and love and lute-playing?

"Oh, why, such transient love to winBring on thy soul this heavy sin? Ah, happy they who die in grace, Ere time can mar their lovely face,And their young hearts grow hard within! Yea, happy they who die as I, And as thine unborn child shall die.Already at the palace gate Stands Nathan with the word of fate!"

Was it a ghost's voice or the wind? For still Bath-Sheba, unaware, Smiled. But King David ill in mindScarce deemed her Beauty half so fair: "Stale is the wine this evening, And sick with roses is the air!"He tore the garland from his hair, And left Bath-Sheba lying there Perturbed, and vaguely wondering…

BALLAD OF THE GOLDEN BOY

FOR LEONARD ABBOTT

DA VINCI'S brow in curious lines Of contemplation deep was knit. Fair dreams before his eyes alit Like water when the moonlight shines, Or amber bees that come and flit: How to make rare and exquisite A pageant for the Florentines.

He beckoned to his page, a lad Whose lips were like two crimson spots, Eyes had he like forget-me-nots. Yet all his boyhood sweet and glad In frock of homely-spun was clad.

And of his multi-colored whims The strangest thus the master told: "Child, I shall crown thy head with gold, And stain with gold thy lovely limbs. For once in this sad age uncouth The bloom of boyhood and of youth Shall be with splendour aureoled."

The boy's heart leaped in one great bound. "Thy gracious will," said he, "be done!" And ere the lad was disengowned The eager painter had begun To clothe his hair with glory round And make his visage like the sun.

Then, seven stars upon his breast, And in his hands a floral horn, Like a young king or like a guest From heaven, riding on the morn, Splendid and nude, the boy was borne In triumph on the pageant's crest.

Like the sea surging on the beach, Reverberant murmurs rise to greet The masqueraders on the street. But what is this? A learned leech Hatless, dishevelled, runs to meet The train. White terror halts his speech.

"Poor lad, my lad, for Heaven's pity," Shakes on the air a father's cry, "Strip from thy flesh this gilded lie, Else, for the pleasure of the city, A self-slain Midas, thou must die!"

And terror smote the revelry. The master's features white and sad

Twitched, yet no single word spake he, But full and straight rose up the lad, Upon his lips curled wistfully The smile that Mona Lisa had.

"Good Sir," said he, "what mortal power In all the dark-winged years and fleet, Could me, a lowly lad, endower With any boon more great, more sweet, Than to have felt one epic hour A city's homage at my feet?

"By the slow tooth of time uneaten, And all the foul things that destroy, From Life's mad game I rise unbeaten, Drenched with the wine of youth and joy, Great Leonardo's Golden Boy.

"Let this be told in song and story, Until the eyes of the world grow dim, Till the sun's rays are wan, and hoary The ringlets of the cherubim, That in my boyhood's glow and glory I died for Florence and for him.

"And when the damp and dreary mould Full soon my little limbs shall hold, Let Leonardo's finger write Upon my grave, in letters bold:

'His life was as a splash of gold Against the plumage of the night.'" Thus spake the lad; and onward rolled The world's great pageant fierce and bright,

THE CYNIC'S CREDO

FROM the cloistered halls of knowledge where phantastic lights are shed By a thousand twisted mirrors, and the dead entomb their dead, Let us walk into the city where men's wounds are raw and red. Three gifts only Life, the strumpet, holds for coward and for brave, Only three, no more— the belly and the phallus and the grave!

When the slow disease of time writes on our face its horrid scrawl, These be good gifts, these be real, let what will the rest befall, Both the first gift and the second —but the last is best of all. Faith and hope and friends desert us ere the cerecloth's folds are drawn; These remain while life remains and one remains when all are gone.

Who am I to judge the pander? Who are you to damn the thief? We are all but storm-tossed sailors stranded on the selfsame reef. Strip us of our fine-cut garments, smite us with some primal grief, Then behold us writhing naked, chain-bound to our carcass, slave To the belly and the phallus and (more kind than God) the grave.

Why desire the stars in heaven, why ask more when we have these? Beast and bird shall be our comrades, we as they may live in ease. Not for us God's angel choir and His cosmic silences! Say not that we, too, are gods, since no god is strong to save From the hunger of the belly and the phallus and the grave.

Saints and sinners all are brothers, none is happy while a trace, Of divine and half-forgotten distant music makes the race Dream of freedom in the trap that holds the good man and the base.

Like the worm that eats our substance, longing eats our hearts: we crave For a life beyond the belly and the phallus and the grave.

Let us nurse no vain delusion! Feast on love and wine and meat, While girls' breasts blush into rosebuds and the touch of flesh is sweet, For the earth, our buxom mother, loves the sound of dancing feet! Though God cursed us with a glimmer of His consciousness He gave Still the belly and the phallus and life's final thrill —the grave!

And Who knows but the Almighty in His heart may envy us? If a little draught of knowledge makes man's life so dolorous, Then the crown of His omniscience is a crown of thorns, and thus Time that ends not broods on heaven, a gigantic incubus. We at least, through evolution climbing upward from the cave, We have the belly and the phallus and God's kindest gift, the grave.

LIFE

THOU art the quick pulsation of the wine, The laugher and the fever and the doom, Skull crowned with roses, malady divine, Dweller alike in cradle and in tomb! Thine is the clangour of the ceaseless strife, The agony of being, and the lust; But Death thy bridegroom turns thy heart, O Life, Whence thou hast risen, to the primal dust.

As one that loves a wanton knowing well That she is false, I yield me to thy spell. But when my cup is foaming to the brim, Yea, when I dream that I have clasped the prize, I see the scythe, and mark the face of him That is thy lover, leering from thine eyes.

IRON PASSION

LOVE'S smiling countenance I know, But not the anger of the god, For I have wandered where Boccaccio And Casanova trod.

I am aweary of these pleasant things, The gallant dalliance and the well-watched fire. Give me the magic of a thousand springs That shook the blood of young Assyrian kings, That stirs the young monk in his cell, and stings Crimson and hot! Wearing the crown of unassuaged desire, Break me or bless me —only love me not!

Come as a wanton red with rouge and wine, And I shall weave out of my song for thee A purpler cloak than his Who, hating, loved that Lesbia. Come to me A saint —the halo shall be thine Of Beatrice.

There is no joy in tender loves or wise,No sweet in wrong:Come unto me with cruel, loveless eyes,O iron passion of the lords of song!

INHIBITION

TO MY PARENTS

O FOR the blithesomeness of birds Whose soul floods ever to their tongue! But to be impotent of words With blinding tears and heart unstrung!

Each breeze that blows from homeward brings To me who am so far away The memory of tender things I might have said and did not say.

Like spirit children, wraiths unborn To luckless lovers long ago, Shades of emotion, mute, forlorn, Within my brain stalk to and fro.

When to my lips they rush, and call,A nameless something rears its head,Forbidding, like the spectral wall Between the living and the dead.

O guardian of the nether mind Where atavistic terrors reel In dark cerebral chambers, bind Old nightmares with thy mystic seal!

But bar not from the sonant gate Of being with thy fiery sword The sweetest thing we wring from fate: Love's one imperishable word!

ON BROADWAY

GREAT jewels glitter like a wizard's rain Of pearl and ruby in the women's hair. And all the men — each drags a golden chain, As though he walked in freedom. In the glare, Luxurious-cushioned wheels a revel-train Where kings of song with weary feet have trod, Where Poe, sad priest to Beauty and to Pain, Bore through the night the Vision and the God.

And yet, perhaps, in this assemblage vast, In some poor heart sounds the enraptured chord, And staggering homeward from a hopeless quest The God-anointed touched me, meanly dressed, And, like a second Peter, I have passed Without salute the vessel of the Lord.

THE UNKNOWN GODDESS

ONE day I stopped at a bookvender's place, And, as a woman fingering old lace, Caressed the volumes holding daintily The treasure-troves of all the world for me. Though flesh clothe not their fond imaginings, The dreams of poets are as living things… By Socrates' and Plato's "Soul" I found "Mam'selle de Maupin" in rich saffron bound. And wrangling still about the old affair The lad and lady of the "Sonnets" were, While Laura smiled to Beatrice; when he Who marshalled all this ghostly company, The clerk, I say, drew me aside, and thus He spake to me: "A lady beauteous Your book, O Poet, deems most exquisite, And asks you please to write your name in it." "Who can it be?" "That may I not reveal. She lives in splendor; dizzy motors reel At her command, beside an equipage, And oh! her town-house is a queen's ménage!" I acquiesced, and in my book, my own, Inscribed a greeting to the fair unknown.

But now I know 'twas magic, 'twas a snare! If to a witch you give a strand of hair She draws you by it over land and sea— Thus, Unknown Lady, are you drawing me!

The ancient Greeks for honeyed lips unkissed, For far-off things still hidden in time's mist, For hopes obscure, mysterious vows and odd, Upreared an altar to the Unknown God! Thus in my heart I raise a shrine to you, O Unknown Goddess of Fifth Avenue! No maiden fair my vagrant heart can thrill, For you I know not must be fairer still… You are my mistress, and to you belong The passion and the vision and the song. Both day and night I wonder who you are, If you obey some far phantastic star? Are your hands lilies? Is their fragrance sweet? And shall I know you when at last we meet? Out of the night, O Goddess, send a sign And prove to me you are indeed divine!

THE VIRGIN SPHINX

TO MURIEL RICE

FROM what strange tomb is thy strange knowledge blown, Borne on the wings of what Chimæra's brood? Thine is her secret whom the Serpent wooed, And his who kindled passion in a stone. Art thou her child, whom Egypt calls her own, Her lore's gray guardian hewn in granite rude? Has she, perchance, in a maternal mood, Revealed to thee her musings vast and lone?

Indifferent of things human and the years, Cerebral still and granite still, she blinks Through half-closed lids perennially wise… But thou, O virgin daughter of the Sphinx, Grant God that Love may scorch thee with his tears, And kiss her ancient wisdom from thine eyes!

THE NUNS,

TO DOROTHY RICE
[Suggested by her Painting at the Independent Artists Exhibition, 1910]

A WOODLAND cloister rude and desolate, Grim shapes of anguish hooded in despair: Half-crazed with horror, yet enthralled, they stare Where, fallen hellward from his holy state, The pale young priest beside the altar stands. Unto the night his gibbering lips rehearse A litany satanic and perverse. The golden monstrance shudders in his hands…

They dare not call upon the Holy Name, Lest, crashing as the thunder on the main, God's anger smite them with His sword of flame. And so they leer, eternally the same, Called in what crevice of thy tortured brain, Prodigious child, from nothingness to pain?

QUEEN LILITH

"LADY of mystery, what is thy history? Where is the rose God gave to thee, Where is thy soul's virginity?" "Lord, my Lord, is thy speech a sword? What is it thou wouldst have of me?"

"There are pleasant passes of tender grasses Where the kine may browse and the wild she-asses, Between the hills and the deep salt sea, But where is the spot that is branded not With the Sign of the Beast on thy fair body?"

"Lord, my Lord, ask thy Scarlet Horde! Who spilt my love and my life like wine? Who threw my body as bread to swine? If my sins in heaven be seventy times seven, What between heaven and hell are thine?"

'"Lady, where is it thy fancies hover, With wolves' eyes prying restlessly For some naked thing that they might discover, Some strange new sin or some strange new lover, Beyond the lover who lies with thee?"

"Lord, my Lord, who has struck the chord That holds my heart in a spider's mesh? Prince of the soul's satiety, Whence springs that hunger beyond the flesh, That only the flesh can appease in me?"

"By the love of a love that is strange as myrrh,By the kiss that kills and the doom that smileth, By my cloven hoof and my fiery spur, Thou art my sister, the Lady Lilith, I am— " "My brother Lucifer!"

"I am thy lover, I am thy brother, Time cannot prison us, space cannot smother, Proudest of Jahveh's kindred we, Whom Chaos, the terrific mother, Begot from stark Eternity.

"I am the cry of the earth that beguileth God's trembling hosts though they loathe my name,The dauntless foe of His loaded game!But where is the tomb that had hidden Lilith, Of the Deathless Worm and the Quenchless Flame?

"I hunted thee where the Ibis nods, From the Brocken's crag to the Upas Tree,

My lonesomeness was as great as God's, When He cast us out from His Holy See, But now at the last thou art come to me!'

"Let Mary of Bethlehem lord it in Heaven, While stringèd beads her seraphs tell, (How art thou fallen, Gabriel!) Thy bridesmaids shall be the Deadly Seven, And I will make thee a queen in Hell!"

2. SAMUEL, I. 26

TO T. E. H.

GOD'S iron finger wrote the law Upon an adamantine scroll That thrilled my life with tender awe When first I met you soul to soul.

Thence springs the great flame heaven-lit, Predestined when the world began, Whereby my heart to yours is knit As David's was to Jonathan.

ENIGMA

TO A. L.

A MOUTH more strange than Mona Lisa's is. Deep eyes where dreams an infinite despair In the blue shadow of mysterious hair That crowned the temples of Semiramis! Thine is the smile that murders with a kiss Of her whose body was a perfect prayer To Ashtoreth, and all the mysteries Of all the queens of all the East are there.

This age of brass has sealed thy soul with fears, And prudence blights thy poppies like a pall: Perchance thy words might move the world to tears, And thy great secret save or sear us all: But round about thee —an enchanted wall — The silence hovers of a-thousand years.

A LITTLE MAID OF SAPPHO

O LITTLE siren of the rose-white skin, Reared to strange music and to stranger sin, With scornful lips that move to no man's plea — O little Maid of Sappho, come to me! Beneath long lashes downcast eyes and coy, Yet uninitiate to no secret joy! O bud burst open ere her day begun, The virgin and the strumpet blent in one! Come close to me! Lay your small hand in mine, And drink the music of my words like wine. And let me touch your little breasts that swell With joy remembered where her kisses fell… Ah! she whose wise caressire fingers strike Your heart-strings and the cithara alike! By what love-potion is your passion fanned, What is the magic of that wary hand? What is the secret of her strange caress, Fierce, tortured kisses, or the tenderness That woman gives to woman —flame or snow? I, too, can kiss or bruise you. You shall know That love like mine is delicate as hers, Or madder still, to madder passion stirs, That shall consume you like some fiery sea — O little Maid of Sappho, come to me!

Or is it song that sets your blood on fire? Behold in me no novice to the lyre. Who is this woman Sappho? I can sing Like her of Eros. Yea, each voiceless thing, The very rocks of Mytilene's strand Shall be made vocal at your sweet command. Hers but the cooing of the Lesbian lutes, Mine every passion in the heart that roots. Albeit your sweetness lives in Sappho's song, Her love is barren…and the years are long. And how she sang, and how she loved and erred, Only by moonsick women will be heard. The lyric thunder that my hand has hurled Shall ring with resonant music through the world, Quickening the blood in every lover's breast, And then your beauty on my glory's crest Shall ride, a goddess, to eternity— O little Maid of Sappho, come to me!

Unscathed in Love's dominion I have been, And still a sceptic kissed the mouth of Sin. Love seemed the dreariest of all things on earth Until my passion filled your heart with mirth! Like frightened bird my cynic wisdom flies Before the cruel candour of your eyes. As for sweet rain a valley sick with drouth, Thus thirsts my love for your indifferent mouth!

And still your thoughts are wandering to the dell Where Sappho walks and where her minions dwell… Be then, of maidens most corrupt, most chaste, The one delight that I shall never taste ! And through the dreary æons yet unborn The love of you shall rankle like a thorn! Leave one last thrill for my sad heart to crave In the ennui of heaven or the grave!… Incite my passion, my embraces flee — And never, never, never come to me!

O listen, listen to my heart-beat's call! Aught else I say, it is not true at all. She has her maidens whom her soft ways woo, And they to her are no less dear than you. For your dear sake I gladly fling aside Laurels and loves! A beggar stripped of pride, I only know I need you more than she O little Maid of Sappho, come to me!

CHILDREN OF LILITH

TO FRANÇOIS VILLON

NOW tell me, Villon, where is he, Young Sporus, lord of Nero's lyre, Who marked with languid ecstasy The seven hills grow red with fire? And he whose madness choked the hall With roses and made night of day? Rome's rulers for an interval, Its boyish Cæsars, where are they?

Where is that city by the Nile, Reared by an emperor's bronze distress When the enamoured crocodile Clawed the Bithynian's loveliness? The argent pool whose listening trees Heard Echo's voice die far away? Narcissus, Hylas, Charmides, O brother Villon, where are they?

Say where the Young Disciple roved When the Messiah's blood was spilt? None knows: for he whom Jesus loved Was not the rock on which He built.

And tell me where is Gaveston, The second Edward's dear dismay? And Shakespeare's love, and Jonathan, O brother Villon, where are they?

Made— for what end? —by God's great hand, Frail enigmatic shapes, they dwell In some phantastic borderland, But on the hitherside of hell! Children of Lilith, each a sprite, Yet wrought like us of Adam's clay, And when they haunt us in the night What, brother Villon, shall we say?

LOVE'S AFTERMATH

ONE summer afternoon We strangled Love, and soon There where my love had been, Upon the couch, was Sin.

The face is still the same, But an unholy flame Gleams in her eyes that serves To whip my angry nerves.

Upon affection's tomb Miasmic blossoms bloom. Whims monstrous and perverse Those girlish lips rehearse.

Her body seems the shrine Of some strange Messaline, And all the lusts of men That tortured Magdalen.

And when beside me stirs That soft white form of hers, A voice cries out to me: For love's sake, set her free!

At last I understand Who with untrembling hand Destroy a lovely shell, To save the soul from hell!

THE SINGING VAMPIRE

THOU art no goddess risen clean From the infatuated brine; Nay, rather an exotic queen, A dark, low-templed Messaline, Dumb till some human sacrifice Be spilt upon her monstrous shrine: With tears and blood we paid the price Of all those golden songs of thine.

Life of an hundred victims throbs In thy enchantments fierce, uncouth, And through thy rose-red passion sobs The pallid wraith of ruined youth. Within thy bosom's labyrinth Has not the monster had his fill? Why slay this stainless Hyacinth? Are there not men to do thy will?

And, though thy hungry eyes had rein Upon his boyish throat and hips, His sweet young self thou shalt not drain, Nor bruise him with thy cruel lips.

Fate's arm against thy heart shall thrust The sabre of thine ancient wrong, O man-devouring queen of lust! O scarlet mouth of tuneful song!

And men shall shun thee as the pest That see thy blood-red mouth— and know, And though thou beat thine arid breast Yet neither milk nor song shall flow. The asp of unassuaged desire Within thy famished flanks must dwell, Doomed to endure till all things tire, In an eternal songless hell.

THE MASTER KEY

TO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

TWO loves have I, both children of delight: One is a youth, like Eros' self, to whom My heart unfolds, as lotus blossoms bloom When her mysterious service chants the Night; And one is like a poppy burning bright. Her strong black tresses bind the hands of doom, She is a wraith from some imperial tomb, Of love enhungered, in the grave's despite.

Lord, though thou be, O Shakespeare, of all rhyme, Life is more strong than any song of thine. For thou wast thrall to circumstance, and Care With rankling poison marred thy singing time: From hell's own lees I still crush goodly wine, And like a Greek, and smiling, flout despair!

THE PILGRIM

THERE knocked One nightly at the harlot's house; Wan was His mouth as kisses without love. His groping fingers followed tremulous The winding of her delicate thin veins; He traced the waxen contour of her breast, And then, as baffled in some strange pursuit, Drew her to Him in weariest embrace;. And, as she shuddered in His grasp, He watched, Still passionless, the working of her throat. The woman's cheek grew crimson as He gazed, But He, a scowling and disgruntled guest, Rose white and famished from her body's feast. Yet one night, pausing half-way, He turned back, Lured by the wraith of long-departed hope; And then He asked of her a monstrous thing… The strumpet blanched and, rising from the couch, Spat in His face. Straightway the Stranger's eye Blazoned exultant with the pilgrim's joy When ends the quest. He lifted up His hands In quiet benediction, and a light Miraculous upon His forehead shone.

But she, being blind, still cursed Him, and reviled: "Albeit I sell my body for very shame I am a woman, not a beast; but thou —" "And I," quoth he, "a Seeker after God."