Thick sleep, with error of the tangled wood,

and vapour from the evening marsh of sense,

and smoothness of the glide of Lethe, would

inaugurate his dullard innocence,

cool’d of his calenture, elaborate brute:

but, all deceitful of his craven hope,

the devious and covert ways of dream

shall lead him out upon no temper’d beam

or thick-grass’d ease, where herbs of soothing shoot

in asphodel, but on the shuddering scope

and the chill touch of endless distances

still thronging on the wingless soul that flees

along the self-pursuing path, to find

the naked night before it and behind.

What night is this, made denser, in his breast

or round him, suddenly or first confest

after its gradual thickening complete?

as tho’ the mighty current, bearing fleet

the unresting stars, had here devolved its lees,

stagnant, contempt, on recreant destinies;

as tho’ a settling of tremendous pens,

above the desolate dream, had shed immense

addition to the incumbence of despair

downward, across this crypt of stirless air,

from some henceforth infrangible attitude,

upon his breast, that knows no dawn renew’d,

builded enormously, each brazen stage,

with rigor of his hope in hopeless age

mummied, and look that turns his thew to stone:

even hers, that is his strangling sphinx, made known

with, on her breast, his fore-erected tomb,

engraven deep, the letters of his doom.

Terrible, if he will not have me else,

I lurk to seize and strangle, in the cells

where he hath made a dusk round his delight:

whether he woo the bride’s incarnate bright

and natural rose to shimmer thro’ the dense

of odour-motes whereby the brooding sense

flows forth beyond its aching bounds and lies,

full-brimm’d and sombre, around her clear disguise

that saturates the dusk with secret gold;

or the miraculous rose of Heaven to unfold

out from its heart of ruby fire and rain

unceasing drift of petals, and maintain

a tabernacle about the little hour

where his eternity hath phantom power:

and terrible I am moulded in the stone

that clamps for ever, rigid, stark, alone,

round nought but absence of the man he was,

some cell of that cold space against whose laws

he seeks a refuge in his inner deep

of love, and soften’d fire, and quicken’d sleep,

tho’ knowing that I, the bride his sin dethroned

and exiled to the wastes that lie disown’d,

can bring that icy want even to the heart

of his most secret bliss, that he shall start

aghast, to see its burning centre fade

and know his hope, the impious, vain, unmade.

Lo now, beneath the watch of knitted boughs

he lies, close-folded to his newer spouse,

creature of morn, that hath ordain’d its fresh

dew and cool glimmer in her crystal flesh

sweetly be mix’d, with quicken’d breath of leaves

and the still charm the spotless dawning weaves.

But I have set my hand upon his soul

and moulded it to my unseen control;

and he hath slept within my shadowy hair

and guards a memory how in my far lair

the forces of tremendous passion stir:

my spectral face shall come between his eyes

and the soft face of her, my name shall rise,

unutter’d, in each thought that goes to her;

and in the quiet waters of her gaze

shall lurk a siren-lure that beckons him

down halls of death and sinful chambers dim:

he shall not know her nor her gentle ways

nor rest, content, by her sufficing source,

but, under stress of the veil’d stars, shall force

her simple bloom to perilous delight

adulterate with pain, some nameless night

stain’d with miasm of flesh become a tomb:

then baffled hope, some torch o’ the blood to illume

and flush the jewel hid beyond all height,

and sombre rage that burst the holy bourne

of garden-joy, murdering innocence,

and the distraught desire to bring a kiss

unto the fleeting centre of the abyss,

discovering the eternal lack, shall spurn

even that sun-god’s garden of pure sense,

not wisely wasted with insensate will.

I am his bride and was and shall be still,

tho’ infamous as devil’s dam, a fear

to wives that watch the cradle-side and hear

how I devour the newling flesh, and none

shall void my claim upon his latest son,

because the father fell beneath my harm,

not god invented late, nor anxious charm;

tho’ with the chemic mind he holds in trust

to show me gem, he celebrate the dust;

dumb earth, in garb of borrow’d beauty dight

by the fond day that curtains him in light;

green pleasaunces, whose smiling would attest

his heart true-born of her untroubled breast

and leaves that beckon on the woodland ways

of the stream-side, where expectation strays

of water-brides, swift blight to them that see,

because the waters are to mirror me:—

of these his hunted thought, seeking retreat

in narrow light, and some sure bosom-heat

to cherish him, and friendly face of kin,

shall mould him fancied ancestors, to win

some certitude that he is in his home

rescued from any doom that bids him roam,

and him the blossom of the day presume,

unheeding that its roots are in my womb

nor song may breathe a magic unconfest

of the anterior silence of my breast:

but I shall lurk within the sightless stare

of his impassive idols, housing there

an unknown that allures and makes him fain

to perish for his creatures’ fancied gain;

and they shall gaze and see not while his brood

befouls their stony presence with much blood,

their children’s, and their captive enemies’,

stretch’d out, exenterate, on those callous knees,

and, last, their own, ere some ill-fortuned field

drink all of it, since faith forbids them yield

and brings to learn in full, the fool’s just trade,

the gratitude of gods themselves have made.

Last, since a pinch of dust may quench the eyes

that took the azure curve of stainless skies

and still the fiercest heart, he seeks to whelm

infinite yearning with a little realm,

beating together with ungentle hands,

enslaved, the trembling spawn of generous lands,

whom he shall force, a busy swarm, to raise,

last bulwarks of his whelming discontent,

heaven-threatening Babels, iron Ninevehs

square-thought with rigid will, a monument

of stony rage in high defiant stones

eternized with blasphemous intent,

and carve the mountain-cone to hide his bones,

a wonder to blank tribes of shrunken days:

but in that cave before his upstart gates

where elder night endures unshaken, waits

that foe of settled peace, the smiling sphinx,

or foul Echidna’s mass’d insidious links,

reminding him that all is vanities;

and when, at last, o’er his nine roods he lies,

stretch’d in the sarcophage whereover grief

makes way before one huge gust of relief,

not the wing-blast of his vain shade shall drive

his wizen’d captives from their dungeon-hive,

and make a solitude about his bed;

nor the chill thought petrific his low head

exudes in rays of darkness, that beyond

this perturb’d sphere congeal, an orb of dread:

I, Lilith, on his tomb immensely throned,

with viewless face and viewless vans outspread;

in the wide waste of his unhallow’d work,

calm coils of fear, my serpent-brood shall lurk;

and I shall muse above the little dust

that was the flesh that held my word in trust.

Warrior and prince and poet, thou that fain

over some tract of lapsing years wouldst reign

nor know’st the crown that all thy wants confess

is Lilith’s own, the round of nothingness:

warrior, whose witless game is but to feel

thyself authentic thro’ the wielded steel

and give thy ghost assurance that thou art,

what aimless endless wars shall make thy heart

arena for the wheeling of their play!

king, that wast mighty in the easy way

of thy desire, what time these thews were young,

how bitter is the wisdom on thy tongue

in the late season, when a westering sun

shows thee thy work, that it is evil done!

O priest and poet, thou that makest God,

woe, when the path of thine illusion, trod

even to the end, reveals thee thy worn face,

eternal hermit of the unhallow’d place!

O man, the coward hope of thy despair

to be confounded with the driven air,

the grass that grows and knows not, the kind herds

that are not wrought with dreams nor any words,

to hollow out some refuge sunk as deep

as that was high thou hadst not sense to keep,

and here thy vexing shade to obliterate

ensuring that it rise not, soon or late,

thou knowing I claim thee whole when that thou art dead.

Go forth: be great, O nothing. I have said.