sad idealist,
Admire the wild play of his paradox.
Great satires of reversal have astounded
His bigots: proud fine dreamers confident
Before an idol in their image are hounded
Through comedies of disillusionment.
Not heavenly Plato, not the Florentine,
Not any mage of Epipsychidion
Can the true nature of the god divine.
Heresiarchs like Heine and like Donne,
Bitter and sweet, and hot and cold, know best
The incomparable anguish of his jest.

LVIII

IN VAIN

I said: "Confession's bitter cautery
Shall fierily search my soul, destroy her ill."
Natheless, the wounded wasting malady
Is her unexorcised sad sovran still.
Oh! that alembic fever of interwed
Desire and dream and sense, rapture and rue!
As soon as my sincerest words are said
And heard they seem apostate and untrue.
For only speech more richly dubious
Than shoaling water, or a ringdove's breast,
Than lighted incense more miraculous
With fumes of strange remembrance, could attest
The morbid beauty of that wasting ill
Whereof I am the cureless lover still.

LIX

RESERVATIONS

Though cold clear cruelties like diamond
Burthen this silken text of dim surmise,
Surely thou knowest I am pity's bond
If one but look at me with stricken eyes.
If like a herald I have blazoned Pride,
I am Humility's own renegade.
For fruits of good and evil have I sighed?
If Love forbid them, Love shall be obeyed.
Though the wroth soul may excommunicate
Her body, yet I see the flagrant strife
Of earthy and heavenly elements create
Colour, change, music. For the Tree of Life
Burns with this precious mystery of sorrows
That Love the Phoenix find immortal morrows.

LX

THE NEW LOVE

Ah! what if thy last canticle be said,
Bright Archer of illusion adored of old,
Thou dream-fast Love in raiment burning-red,
Wreathed with white doves, quivered with burning gold?
Pass with thy Triumph of Lovers, Aucassin,
Tristram, and Pharamond, and Lancelot,
Dante, and Rudel, all thy haughty kin,
Princes in that high heaven, as we are not.--
With some gilt couchant sphinx both casqued and crowned,
All mailed in amethyst the new god comes,
Whose brooding beautiful eyes at last have found
Our uncanonical dark martyrdoms,
Who from the sombre catacombs of these
Brings his great miracles and mysteries.

LXI

THE WAYS OF LOVE

Hail the impla