I write this for the world's eye, yet for one. When she shall hear of me, and not alone, Let her know always that my heart is hers, As it was always. If my fancy errs Into strange places, wildly following The flying track of any flitting thing, If I recapture any cast aside Garlands, or twine for roses that have died Fresh roses, or bid flowers-soft arms entwine My forehead flushed with some bewildering wine, Then let her know that I am most forlorn. There is no penance harder to be borne Than, amid happy faces and the voice Of revellers who in revelling rejoice, To hear one's own sad heart keep time in vain With some sad unforgotten old refrain. For me, the world's eternal silence dwells Not in the peace of those ecstatic cells Where recollection goes the way of prayer Into the void, the welcoming void air, But here, in these bright crowds to be alone. Then let her know that I am most her own! Yet, if it might but save my soul from her, O come to me, Folly the Comforter, Fling those wild arms around me, take my hand, And lead me back to that once longed-for land, Where it is always midnight, and the light Of many tapers has burnt out the night, And swift life finds no moment set apart For rest, and the seclusion of the heart, And the return of any yesterday. Come to me, Folly, now, take me away; I will be faithful to you until death Puff out this wavering and unsteady breath. Folly, the bride of such unhappy men As I am, were you not my mistress, when, Love having not yet chosen me to be proud, I followed all the voices of the crowd? But I forsook you: I return anew, And for my bride I claim, I capture you. Folly, I will be faithful to you now. I will pluck all your roses for my brow, And, with the thorns of ruined roses crowned, I will drink every poison life has found In the enchantments that your fingers brew. Finally I commend myself to you, Multitudinous senses: carry me Upon your beating wings where I may see The world and all the glory of the world, And bid my soul from lust to lust be hurled, Endlessly, precipitously, on. Only in you is there oblivion, Multitudinous senses; in your fire I light and I exterminate desire. Though it cry all night long, shall I not steep My sorrow in the fever of your sleep? Where, if no phantom with faint fingers pale Beckon to me, wildly, across the veil Of the dim waving of her sorcerous hair, I may yet find your very peace, despair! Benignant principalities and powers Of evil, powers of the world's abysmal hours, Take me and make me yours: I am yours: O take The sacrifice of soul and body, break The mould of this void spirit, scatter it Into the vague and shoreless infinite, Pour it upon the restless arrogant Winds of tumultuous spaces; grant, O grant That the loosed sails of this determinate soul Hurry it to disaster, and the goal Of swiftest shipwreck; that this soul descend The unending depths until oblivion end In self-oblivion, and at last be lost Where never any other wandering ghost, Voyaging from other worlds remembered not, May find it and remind of things forgot. |