s
Are matched with careless and short-sighted eyes.

Out in the open light, even the moon,
The Sibyl, clothed in white, appears, with glance
Lyncean, piercing deep and bringing forth
From the world's ends great hosts of monstrous things,
The monsters born of shadows and of dreams.

FIRST LOVE

When in my breast I felt my first-born love,
Thrice-noble maiden of compliant heart,
I was possessed with the strange fear that filled
The youthful princess of the ancient tale
At sight of the black man's enchanted rod.

O mate, who madest first my early years
Blossom, too soon thou fleddest far from me
Nor sawest me again! Wild Fairies took
My speech, and evil demons seized my all;
Yet soul and body, my whole being shivers
From that awakening thou sangest me,
Eternal Woman! Thou wert what far Mecca
Is for the faithful's prayer to his prophet.
O far off Mecca! O eternal Fear
Of white Desire upon the shining wings
Of a black sinner! O king Love, chased like
Orestes, by a Fury serpent-haired!

THE MADMAN

A madman chased my early childhood years
Thrice-sweet and blossoming, and seizing them--
Alas!--he crushed them in his reckless fury
Like twigs of purple-colored pomegranate!

He scattered them in pieces everywhere:
Into the joyless house and in the yard,
On narrow streets, and paths, and pathless haunts,
Where persecution raves, and menace dumb
Chills all away from the pure light and air.
The madman's cursed hands hold everything
With snares and claws and stones and knives; they fall
On loneliness and on embracings, night
Or day, on sleep or wake, and everywhere!

And yonder on the streets and in the houses,
Children like me in age, whose years were filled
With bloom and sweetness, freely ran and laughed
And played. Behind me, close, the madman's snares
I heard; and then, the deadened sound of feet!
I breathed his flaming breath! And if his steps
Were slow, still wilder did his laughter hunt me!

Oh, for my life's cold quiverings of pain!
Oh, for the goading--not like the divine
Goading that drove the maid of Inachus,
Io, to wander on and on in frenzy;--
But like the sudden goading that smites down
The little bird when first it tries its wings!
And lo, blood of my blood the madman was!
A past, ancestral, long forgotten sin,
That, bursting forth upon me vampire-like,
Snatched from my head the dewy crown of joy!

OUR HOME

Our home has not the ugly clamoring
Nor the dumb stilln