I.
Ah stern cold man
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water!
Do you set your face against the daughter
Of life? Can you never discard
Your curt pride’s ban?
You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
You want at last ah me!
To break my heart
Evader!
You know your mouth
Was always sooner to soften
Even than your eyes.
Now shut it lies
Relentless however often
I kiss it in drouth.
It has no breath
Nor any relaxing. Where
Where are you what have you done?
What is this mouth of stone?
How did you dare
Take cover in death!
II.
Once you could see
The white moon show like a breast revealed
By the slipping shawl of stars.
Could see the small stars tremble
As the heart beneath did wield
Systole diastole.
All the lovely macrocosm
Was woman once to you
Bride to your groom.
No tree in bloom
But it leaned you a new
White bosom.
And always and ever
Soft as a summering tree
Unfolds from the sky for your good
Unfolded womanhood;
Shedding you down as a tree
Sheds its flowers on a river.
I saw your brows
Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom
And I shed my very soul down into your thought;
Like flowers I fell to be caught
On the comforted pool like bloom
That leaves the boughs.
III.
Oh masquerader
With a hard face white-enamelled
What are you now?
Do you care no longer how
My heart is trammelled
Evader?
Is this you after all
Metallic obdurate
With bowels of steel?
Did you never feel?—
Cold insensate
Mechanical!
Ah no!—you multiform
You that I loved you wonderful
You who darkened and shone
You were many men in one;
But never this null
This never-warm!
Is this the sum of you?
Is it all nought?
Cold metal-cold?
Are you all told
Here iron-wrought?
Is this what’s become of you?