TWO SONGS FROM A PLAY
  I
 I SAW a staring virgin stand
 Where holy Dionysus died,
 And tear the heart out of his side.
 And lay the heart upon her hand
 And bear that beating heart away;
 Of Magnus Annus at the spring,
 As though God's death were but a play.
 Another Troy must rise and set,
 Another lineage feed the crow,
 Another Argo's painted prow
 Drive to a flashier bauble yet.
 The Roman Empire stood appalled:
 It dropped the reins of peace and war
 When that fierce virgin and her Star
 Out of the fabulous darkness called.
 In pity for man's darkening thought
 He walked that room and issued thence
 In Galilean turbulence;
 The Babylonian starlight brought
 A fabulous, formless darkness in;
 Odour of blood when Christ was slain
 Made all platonic tolerance vain
 And vain all Doric discipline.
 Everything that man esteems
 Endures a moment or a day.
 Love's pleasure drives his love away,
 The painter's brush consumes his dreams;
 The herald's cry, the soldier's tread
 Exhaust his glory and his might:
 Whatever flames upon the night
 Man's own resinous heart has fed.