rlanded
For festival, O sumptuous flowery stole
For rites of adoration!_"--See instead
A cilice drenched with torment of my soul!
Nevertheless the fibres implicate
Proud exultations; burning, have revealed
Rich throes of triumph, sweetness passionate
As pained lilies reared in thorn-plots yield.
Ah! silver wedding-garment of the bride,
Ah! fiery cilice, I am satisfied!

VI

THE DEATH OF PROCRIS

Come gaze on Procris, poor soon-perished child!
Why did her innocent virginity
Follow Desire within his arrowy wild?
She dies pursuing the cruel ecstasy
That keeps as mortal wounds for them that find.
Serene her pensive body lies at last
Like a mown poppy-flower to sleep resigned,
Softly resigned. The wildwood things aghast,
With pitiful hearts instinctive, sweet as hers,
Approach her now: love, death, and virgin grace,
Blue distance, and the stricken foresters,
And all the dreaming, healing, woodland place
Are patterned into tender melodies
Of lovely line and hue--a music of peace!

VII

THE WARNING

As delicate gorgeous rains of dusky gold
Heavy white lilies, Love importunate
Besets the soul,--as that wild Splendour told
Pale Danae her haughty heavenly fate.
Not speared in burning points but spun in strands
My senses: drowsily burning webs are they
That veil me head to foot. While on mine hands
And hair and lids thy kisses die away
Through all my being their strange echoes thrill
And from the body's flowery mysticism
I draw the last white honey. What is thine ill?
What wouldst thou more of that great symbolism?
Beyond this ultimate moment nothing lies
But moonless cold and darkness. Ah! be wise!

VIII

THE ACCUSATION

Mere night! The unconsenting Soul stands by,
A moaning protestant. "Ah, not for this,
And not for this, through rose and thorn was I
Drawn to surrender and the bridal-kiss.
Annunciations lit with jewelled wings
Of sudden angels mid the lilies tall,
Proud prothalamia chaunting enraptured things,--
O sumptuous fables, why so prodigal
Of masque and music, of dreams like foam-white swans
On lakes of hyacinthus? Must Love seek
Great allies, Beauty sound her arriere-bans
That all her splendours betray us to this bleak
Simplicity whereto blind satyrs run?"--
The irony seems old, old as the sun.

IX

THE MEDIEVAL MIRROR-CASES

I

Rondels of old