| The unpurged images of day recede; |
| The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed; |
| Night resonance recedes,
night-walkers’ song |
| After great cathedral gong; |
| A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains |
| All that man is, |
| All
mere complexities, |
| The fury and the mire of human veins. |
|
|
|
|
| Before me floats an image, man or shade, |
| Shade more than man, more image than a shade; |
| For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth |
| May unwind
the winding path; |
| A mouth that has no moisture and no breath |
| Breathless mouths may summon; |
| I hail
the superhuman; |
| I call it death-in-life and life-in-death. |
|
|
|
|
| Miracle, bird or golden handiwork, |
| More miracle
than bird or handiwork, |
| Planted on the star-lit golden bough, |
| Can like the cocks of Hades crow, |
| Or, by
the moon embittered, scorn aloud |
| In glory of changeless metal |
| Common bird or petal |
| And all complexities
of mire or blood. |
|
|
|
|
| At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement flit |
| Flames that no faggot feeds, nor steel has
lit, |
| Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, |
| Where blood-begotten spirits come |
| And all complexities
of fury leave, |
| Dying into a dance, |
| An agony of trance, |
| An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve. |
|
|
|
|
| Astraddle on the dolphin’s mire and blood, |
| Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood, |
| The golden
smithies of the Emperor! |
| Marbles of the dancing floor |
| Break bitter furies of complexity, |
| Those images
that yet |
| Fresh images beget, |
| That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea. |
| 1930 |
