Like fauns embossed in our domain, We look abroad, and our calm eyes Mark how the goatish gods of pain Revel; and if by grim surprise They break into our paradise, Patient we build its beauty up again. REVELATION At your mouth, white and milk-warm sphinx, I taste a strange apocalypse: Your subtle taper finger-tips Weave me new heavens, yet, methinks, I know the wiles and each iynx That brought me passionate to your lips: I know you bare as laughter strips Your charnel beauty; yet my spirit drinks Pure knowledge from this tainted well, And now hears voices yet unheard Within it, and without it sees That world of which the poets tell Their vision in the stammered word Of those that wake from piercing ecstasies. MINOAN PORCELAIN Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze All imperturbable do not Even make pretences to regard The justing absence of her stays, Where many a Tyrian gallipot Excites desire with spilth of nard. The bistred rims above the fard Of cheeks as red as bergamot Attest that no shamefaced delays Will clog fulfilment, nor retard Full payment of the Cyprian's praise Down to the last remorseful jot. Hail priestess of we know not what Strange cult of Mycenean days! THE DECAMERON Noon with a depth of shadow beneath the trees Shakes in the heat, quivers to the sound of lutes: Half shaded, half sunlit, a great bowl of fruits Glistens purple and golden: the flasks of wine Cool in their panniers of snow: silks muffle and shine: Dim velvet, where through the leaves a sunbeam shoots, Rifts in a pane of scarlet: fingers tapping the roots Keep languid time to the music's soft slow decline. Suddenly from the gate rises up a cry, Hideous broken laughter, scarce human in sound; Gaunt clawed hands, thrust through the bars despairingly, Clutch fast at the scented air, while on the ground Lie the poor plague-stricken carrions, who have found Strength to crawl forth and curse the sunshine and die. IN UNCERTAINTY TO A LADY I am not one of those who sip, Like a quotidian bock, Cheap idylls from a languid lip Prepared to yawn or mock. I wait the indubitable word, The great Unconscious Cue. Has it been spoken and unheard? Spoken, perhaps, by you ...? CRAPULOUS IMPRESSION (To J.S.) Still life, still life ... the high-lights shine Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine Stands firmly solid in the glasses, Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light. The fruits metallically gleam, Globey in their heaped-up bowl, And there are faces against the night Of the outer room--faces that seem Part of this still, still life ... they've lost their soul.