e,
And suddenly my soul inherited
Some gorgeous terrible dukedom of desire
Like those in bright Andromeda's realms of fire.

L

AT THE END

The fiery permutations of the soul
Are infinite, but how to be revealed?
On what impassive matter must the whole
Inveterate coil of good and ill be sealed!
How much too simple all the tale of deeds
To pattern out these labyrinthine things,
These knots of bright unreason, ghostly bredes
Veiled weavers weave, moving with silver wings
Within the duskling sense. Most diverse visions
Their visionaries darkly reconcile
At one sad end. Fate's delicate derisions
Through the same hell of penance may beguile
Two women, who meet with alien eyes downcast;
Yet one stand first with Love, and one the last.

LI

THE SOUL OF AGE

I have seen delicate aged women wrought
Most tenderly by Time, their passionate past
By the wise vigils of forgiving thought
Amerced of pain, mere beauty at the last.
So may my soul be chaste, serene, enriched
Like an Etruscan mirror one has found
In kind oblivions, graciously bewitched
With precious patinas, a various round
Of milky opal, or turkis, or emerald,
Glistered with rubies faint and smoky pearls,
Where swirls of incised pattern have enthralled
Figures of sweet archaic gods and girls,
And I shall say: "Thou art a curious toy,
O soul that mirrored Love and Wrath and Joy!"

LI I

HYPNEROTOMACHIA

Ah! Pride and Wrath and Mirth and Pain and Pity,
Some amethystine day at last will be,
When your bright guard and Phantasy's hill-city
Shall be like wonders on a tapestry;
And we shall touch between tired orisons
The symbolism of those freaked crowns and wings,--
Then gaze across the falling Avalons,
The resignations of autumnal things,
And see among the pointed cypresses
The one god left, the smiling perverse god,
The Love that will not leave the loverless,
Contending with the Stranger of the Rod,--
Until these twain become as one, and all
The Soul and Sense be starrily vesperal.

LIII

THE REVOLT

Not so, my Soul? Rather for thee the fate
Of those hieratic Carthaginian queens
Who needs must vanish through the gods' own gate,
Even holy Flame, with music and great threnes
Idolatrous, as on soft gorgeous wings,
If Time's least kiss had subtly disallowed
Their beauty's sacred unisons?--Fair things