“These gods are mortal as the heart that shaped them And in that hour when mankind’s heart must break These gods who only by that heart escaped them Fall to the wolf and Jörmungand the snake.” Fate pauses, but from Hela’s halls is heard A voice is young when all the gods are dead. Balder the beautiful has one more word The word that even Fate must leave unsaid. “True they depart the half-gods, and the snake And Fenris come. But in the heart’s defection I, Balder, bound in Hell for that heart’s sake I am the life and I the resurrection. “I, love, being loosed, will take my harp up--so-- Singing what all the world at last will learn ‘The devils come because the half-gods go But in the end the gods, the gods return.’” WHEELS 1919. Why d’you write about Frascati’s You who from the balcony leaning ’Neath the lure that was Astarte’s Find a negroid devil grinning. Changed indeed and almost stupid Yielding to analysis Now a Piccadilly cupid Hanging on a painted kiss. Now a toy in two dimensions Operated by a string In your hand, whose interventions Set the object capering. You who at the higher level Know love as he truly is Not the fair Assyrian devil, Not the poor idolatries, Of the savage, not the crazes Say of Shelley, and his set: But you find him (as your phrase is) Palm to palm in quiet sweat. That’s a way, O brother brother A new way for verse to move There’s an older and another Will you listen? way of love. I from that same terrace waiting For the music to begin “Amoureuse” anticipating Watched a boy who blundered in. Slim he was, a little stooping At the shoulders as it seemed, Eyes on which the lids were drooping Seeing only what he dreamed. Where he came was noise and clatter, But the pandemonium Either didn’t seem to matter Where he stood or else grew dumb. And the waltz the band was creaking, Like a cluster, round his head Changed to cry “What’s music seeking Save what he has left unsaid.” And like flowers, bourgeois faces Overtaken by the tune, Pilfered unimagined graces From an unimagined June. And, when once again the Babel Rose, though we had never stirred, There between us at the table At Frascati’s was the third. What’s the good of all this antic You’ll impatiently exclaim, Still incurably romantic Still incurably the same. Only this--that at Frascati’s If one does not wash one’s hands That old magic was Astarte’s Goes, before one understands. THE WELL.