She is the night: all horror is of her

heap’d, shapeless, on the unclaim’d chaotic marsh

or huddled on the looming sepulchre

where the incult and scanty herb is harsh.

She is the night: all terror is of her

when the distemper’d dark begins to boil

with wavering face of larve and oily blur

of pallor on her suffocating coil.

Or majesty is hers, when marble gloom

supports her, calm, with glittering signs severe

and grandeur of metallic roof of doom,

far in the windows of our broken sphere.

Or she can be all pale, under no moon

or star, with veiling of the glamour cloud,

all pale, as were the fainting secret soon

to be exhaled, bride-robed in clinging shroud.

For she is night, and knows each wooing mood:

and her warm breasts are near in the charm’d air

of summer eve, and lovingly delude

the aching brow that craves their tender care.

The wooing night: all nuptials are of her;

and she the musky golden cloud that hangs

on maiden blood that burns, a boding stir

shot thro’ with flashes of alluring pangs,

far off, in creeks that slept unvisited

or moved so smoothly that no ripple creas’d

their mirror’d slip of blue, till that sweet dread

melted the air and soft sighs stole, releas’d;

and she the shame of brides, veiling the white

of bosoms that for sharp fulfilment yearn;

she is the obscure centre of delight

and steals the kiss, the kiss she would return

deepen’d with all the abysm that under speech

moves shudderingly, or as that gulf is known

to set the astonied spouses each from each

across the futile sea of sighs, alone.

All mystery, and all love, beyond our ken,

she woos us, mournful till we find her fair:

and gods and stars and songs and souls of men

are the sparse jewels in her scatter’d hair.

 

1898-1899

 

 

 

 

 

 

LILITH

EXPLICIT