There is a crazed shadow from no golden body That poisons at the core What smiles may stray: It mixes with all God-ancestralled essences, And twists the brain and heart. This shadow sits in the texture of Saul’s being, Mauling your love and beauty with its lies: I hold a power like light to shrivel it— There, in your throat’s hollow—that green jade. [_He snatches at it as she lets it fall. He grows white and troubled, and walks to where_ AMAK _is playing, and sees minutely strewn pieces of paper_.] [_He mutters._] Lost—lost. The child has torn the scroll in it, And half is away. It cannot be spelt now. LILITH God, restore me his love. Ah! Well! [_She rises._] I will go now; prepare our evening meal; And waken my husband, my love once. NUBIAN [_Musing._] The lightning of the heavens Lifts an apocalypse: The dumb night’s lips are scared and wide, The world is reeling with sound: Was I deaf before, mute, tied? What shakes here from lustre-seeded pomegranates Not in the great world, More vast and terrible? What is this ecstasy in form, This lightning That found the lightning in my blood, Searing my spirit’s lips aghast and naked? I am flung in the abyss of days, And the void is filled with rushing sound From pent eternities: I am strewn as the cypher is strewn. A woman—a soft woman! Our girls have hair Like heights of night ringing with never-seen larks, Or blindness dim with dreams: Here is a yellow tiger gay that blinds your night. Mane—Mane—Mane! Your honey spilt round that small dazzling face Shakes me to golden tremors; I have no life at all, Only thin golden tremors. Light tender beast! Your fragile gleaming wrists Have shaken the scaled glacier from under me, And bored into my craft That is now with the old dreamy Adam With other things of dust. LILITH You lazy hound! See my poor child. [_He turns to see_ LILITH _drop the bowl and cakes and run to_ AMAK—_who is crying, half stifled under_ SAUL’S _huge shield_.] [SAUL _opens his eyes_.] * * * * * II THE SONG OF TEL THE NUBIAN Small dazzling face! I shut you in my soul; How can I perish now? But thence a strange decay— Your fragile gleaming wrists Waver my days and shake my life To golden tremors. I have no life at all, Only thin golden tremors That shudder over the abyss of days Which hedged my spirit, my spirit your prison walls That shrunk like phantasms with your vivid beauty— Towering and widening till The sad moonless place Throngs with a million torches And spears of flaming wings.