The spirit of imagination pines,
Captive in webs of exquisite unreason.
Alas for this translated soul of hers,
The rose's, that must be the garlander's!

XXXIX

PREDECESSORS

Faery of Sheba, idol moulded in
Onyx milk-white, moon-mailed and casqued with gems;
Ye gold-swathed queens of Egypt, Isis' kin,
With bright god-hawks and snakes for diadems;
Serene masque-music of Greek girls that bear
The sacred Veil to that Athenian feast;
Hypatia, casting from thine ivory chair
The gods' last challenge to the godless priest;
Fantastic fine Provencals wistfully
Hearkening Love, the mournful lute player;
Diamond ladies of that Italy
When Art and Wisdom Passion's angels were--
Ye give this grail (touch with no mad misprision!)
Of Beauty's rose-red miracled tradition.

XL

TRANSITION

But these recoil in riddles and reserves.--
The dream's untuned. Ah! vanished chords thereof!
Ah! keen divisions of the jangled nerves
That strung so long the gracious lutes of love!--
Hurry to sell old magian Lamps for new,
Though beauty's moonlike domes dissolve and pass:
If all things change, ye would be changing too,
Crazed hearts that know not your desire, alas!
Still, through these wintry treasons that forswear
The lovely bitter bondage of our god,
Rare perennations of the soul prepare--
And Music yet shall seal the period
With some new star,--with sad pure hands unveil
For ransomed eyes again the gilded Grail.

XLI

THE VIRTUE OF PRIDE

My troubled bosom shall be cinct with pride,
Girdled with red asterias. Is it sin
If I have cast lover and friend aside,
Scorning them as myself who cannot win
The strengths of beauty, the heavenly altitudes?--
O sad and sacred Spirit of Disdain,
What penances upon thine ivory roods
Within the burning Castles of thy pain!--
Thy mystic will no motion ever knew
Outwith the splendid danger of extremes;
Thy sorrowful refusals pass thee through
The great concentrics of star-builded dreams,
Unto the crypt of absolute ecstasy,
To God or Nothing--where thine heart would be.

XLII

SPELL-BOUND

I have been frozen. Once I was not cold.
But I have strayed within some glittering
Night Of Lapland miracle, have leagued of old
With glaives and banners of wild Polar light.
Yet if I could dissolve in tears this core
Of ice, my heart, undo these crystal spe