Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer Above the snows, among the flowers? She reaps This mouldy garner of the fatal kick? Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms, Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign, From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul, The trader in attractions sinks, all brine To thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—bark, dog! hoot, owl! And she is blushless: ancient worship weeps. Suicide Graces dangle down the charms Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps. She stands in her unholy oily leer A statue losing feature, weather-sick Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere. The curtain cried for magnifies to see!— We cannot quench our one corrupting glance: The vision of the rumour will not flee. Doth the Boy own such Mother?—shoot his dart To bring her, countless as the crested deeps, Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? False is that vision, shrieks the devotee; Incredible, we echo; and anew Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. Low humourist this leader seems; perchance Pitched from his University career, Adept at classic fooling. Yet of mould Human those Gods were: deathless too: On high they not as meditatives paced: Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh: Descending, they would touch the lowest here: And she, that lighted form of blue and gold, Whom the seas gave, all earth, all earth embraced; Exulting in the great hauls of her mesh; Desired and hated, desperately dear; Most human of them was. No more pursue! Enough that the black story can be told. It preaches to the eminently placed: For whom disastrous wreckage is nigh due, Paints omen. Truly they our throbber had; The passions plumping, passions playing leech, Cunning to trick us for the day’s good cheer. Our uncorrected human heart will swell To notions monstrous, doings mad As billows on a foam-lashed beach; Borne on the tides of alternating heats, Will drug the brain, will doom the soul as well; Call the closed mouth of that harsh final Power To speak in judgement: Nemesis, the fell: Of those bright Gods assembled, offspring sour; The last surviving on the upper seats; As with men Reason when their hearts rebel.