Your far-off smile is proof that we Are strangers, Love a subtle liar: It is not you who long for me, It is not I whom you desire. With the grim hunger of that plant Whose tendrils round its prey are thrown, You clutch my heart: your red lips pant With a fierce purpose not your own. Deep in your breast an alien Power Lurks for me, patient as the fates, Or as the love-mouth of the flower For the appointed pollen waits. Like to some slimy incubus It rises from the primal main; Its horrid fangs will make of us Blind links in an unending chain. The ancient chain of blood and tears And all men's dreams who dreamed in vain! Must we prolong through weary years The never ceasing curse of Cain? An hundred generations toiled And loved and sweated and begot, To cast their breads on waters soiled, And recreate the brute -- for what? The evil leer, the sullen frown, The apish jowl, the smile inane -- To drag this precious burden down The long road -- was it worth the pain? And even we, what can we bring? A thousand ills are on us all, Where is the pleasure without sting, Where is the honey without gall? Instead of gods above the strife Who dream of some transcendant goal, Shall we be instruments of life, To save the body, slave the soul? Shall we not dare to pluck life's sweet, But smash the tablets of its rule? Must I who sate at wisdom's feet End as all men must end&dashLove's Fool? My heart, a scarlet butterfly, Through scented groves was wont to whirl. Shall I be prisoned by the sly Ways of the immemorial girl? Shall my songs perish that an heir Live to renew the curse of old? I know not. But God damn your hair That through my fingers runs like gold! . . . Shall I, Lord of a thousand quests, Succumb unto your blood's commands? I know not. But God damn your breasts! They are like rosebuds in my hands! . . . Those lips, those lines, that smile, those eyes, Love's lovely traps, God damn them all! . . . O Life-Force thou art very wise, Thou art an artist. I shall fall. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SHADOWY WATERS: A DRAMATIC POEM by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS DAYS TOO SHORT by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES NATHAN HALE [SEPTEMBER 22, 1776] by FRANCIS MILES FINCH LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE by EDWIN MARKHAM A QUOI BON DIRE by CHARLOTTE MEW AN EVENING by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM |