Take my hand, then, come with me By the white shadowy crashings of a sea . . . Look how the long volutes of foam unfold To spread their mottled shimmer along the sand! . . . Take my hand, Do not remember how these depths are cold, Nor how, when you are dead, Green leagues of sea will glimmer above your head. You lean your face upon your hands and cry, The blown sand whispers about your feet, Terrible seems it now to die,-- Terrible now, with life so incomplete, To turn away from the balconies and the music, The sunlit afternoons, To hear behind you there a far-off laughter Lost in a stirring of sand among dry dunes . . . Die not sadly, you whom life has beaten! Lift your face up, laughing, die like a queen! Take cold flowers of foam in your warm white fingers! Death's but a change of sky from blue to green . . . As evening falls, The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow . . . the music breathes upon us, The rayed white shaft plays over our heads like magic, And to and fro we move and lean and change . . . You, in a world grown strange, Laugh at a darkness, clench your hands despairing, Smash your glass on a floor, no longer caring, Sink suddenly down and cry . . . You hear the applause that greets your latest rival, You are forgotten: your rival--who knows?--is I . . . I laugh in the warm bright light of answering laughter, I am inspired and young . . . and though I see You sitting alone there, dark, with shut eyes crying, I bask in the light, and in your hate of me . . . Failure . . . well, the time comes soon or later . . . The night must come . . . and I'll be one who clings, Desperately, to hold the applause, one instant,-- To keep some youngster waiting in the wings. The music changes tone . . . a room is darkened, Someone is moving . . . the crack of white light widens, And all is dark again; till suddenly falls A wandering disk of light on floor and walls, Winks out, returns again, climbs and descends, Gleams on a clock, a glass, shrinks back to darkness; And then at last, in the chaos of that place, Dazzles like frozen fire on your clear face. Well, I have found you. We have met at last. Now you shall not escape me: in your eyes I see the horrible huddlings of your past,-- All you remember blackens, utters cries, Reaches far hands and faint. I hold the light Close to your cheek, watch the pained pupils shrink,-- Watch the vile ghosts of all you vilely think . . . Now all the hatreds of my life have met To hold high carnival . . . we do not speak, My fingers find the well-loved throat they seek, And press, and fling you down . . . and then forget.