A WOMAN YOUNG AND OLD
 I
 FATHER AND CHILD
 SHE hears me strike the board and say
 That she is under ban
 Of all good men and women,
 Being mentioned with a man
 That has the worst of all bad names;
 And thereupon replies
 That his hair is beautiful,
 Cold as the March wind his eyes.
 
 II
 BEFORE THE WORLD WAS MADE
 
 IF I make the lashes dark
 And the eyes more bright
 And the lips more scarlet,
 Or ask if all be right
 From mirror after mirror,
 No vanity's displayed:
 I'm looking for the face I had
 Before the world was made.
 What if I look upon a man
 As though on my beloved,
 And my blood be cold the while
 And my heart unmoved?
 Why should he think me cruel
 Or that he is betrayed?
 I'd have him love the thing that was
 Before the world was made.
 
 III
 A FIRST CONFESSION
 
 I ADMIT the briar
 Entangled in my hair
 Did not injure me;
 My blenching and trembling,
 Nothing but dissembling,
 Nothing but coquetry.
 I long for truth, and yet
 I cannot stay from that
 My better self disowns,
 For a man's attention
 Brings such satisfaction
 To the craving in my bones.
 Brightness that I pull back
 From the Zodiac,
 Why those questioning eyes
 That are fixed upon me?
 What can they do but shun me
 If empty night replies?
 
 IV
 HER TRIUMPH
 
 I DID the dragon's will until you came
 Because I had fancied love a casual
 Improvisation, or a settled game
 That followed if I let the kerchief fall:
 Those deeds were best that gave the minute wings
 And heavenly music if they gave it wit;
 And then you stood among the dragon-rings.
 I mocked, being crazy, but you mastered it
 And broke the chain and set my ankles free,
 Saint George or else a pagan Perseus;
 And now we stare astonished at the sea,
 And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us.
 
 V
 
 CONSOLATION
 
 O BUT there is wisdom
 In what the sages said;
 But stretch that body for a while
 And lay down that head
 Till I have told the sages
 Where man is comforted.
 How could passion run so deep
 Had I never thought
 That the crime of being born
 Blackens all our lot?
 But where the crime's committed
 The crime can be forgot.
 
 VI
 CHOSEN
 
 THE lot of love is chosen.  I learnt that much
 Struggling for an image on the track
 Of the whirling Zodiac.
 Scarce did he my body touch,
 Scarce sank he from the west
 Or found a subtetranean rest
 On the maternal midnight of my breast
 Before I had marked him on his northern way,
 And seemed to stand although in bed I lay.
 I struggled with the horror of daybreak,
 I chose it for my lot! If questioned on
 My utmost pleasure with a man
 By some new-married bride, I take
 That stillness for a theme
 Where his heart my heart did seem
 And both adrift on the miraculous stream
 Where – wrote a learned astrologer –
 The Zodiac is changed into a sphere.
 
 VII
 PARTING
 He. Dear, I must be gone
 While night Shuts the eyes
 Of the household spies;
 That song announces dawn.
 She. No, night's bird and love's
 Bids all true lovers rest,
 While his loud song reproves
 The murderous stealth of day.
 He. Daylight already flies
 From mountain crest to crest
 She. That light is from the moom.
 He. That bird...
 She. Let him sing on,
 I offer to love's play
 My dark declivities.
 
 VIII
 HER VISION IN THE WOOD
 
 DRY timber under that rich foliage,
 At wine-dark midnight in the sacred wood,
 Too old for a man's love I stood in rage
 Imagining men.  Imagining that I could
 A greater with a lesser pang assuage
 Or but to find if withered vein ran blood,
 I tore my body that its wine might cover
 Whatever could rccall the lip of lover.
 And after that I held my fingers up,
 Stared at the wine-dark nail, or dark that ran
 Down every withered finger from the top;
 But the dark changed to red, and torches shone,
 And deafening music shook the leaves; a troop
 Shouldered a litter with a wounded man,
 Or smote upon the string and to the sound
 Sang of the beast that gave the fatal wound.
 All stately women moving to a song
 With loosened hair or foreheads grief-distraught,
 It seemed a Quattrocento painter's throng,
 A thoughtless image of Mantegna's thought –
 Why should they think that are for ever young?
 Till suddenly in grief's contagion caught,
 I stared upon his blood-bedabbled breast
 And sang my malediction with the rest.
 That thing all blood and mire, that beast-torn wreck,
 Half turned and fixed a glazing eye on mine,
 And, though love's bitter-sweet had all come back,
 Those bodies from a picture or a coin
 Nor saw my body fall nor heard it shriek,
 Nor knew, drunken with singing as with wine,
 That they had brought no fabulous symbol there
 But my heart's victim and its torturer.
 
 IX
 A LAST CONFESSION
 
 WHAT lively lad most pleasured me
 Of all that with me lay?
 I answer that I gave my soul
 And loved in misery,
 But had great pleasure with a lad
 That I loved bodily.
 Flinging from his arms I laughed
 To think his passion such
 He fancied that I gave a soul
 Did but our bodies touch,
 And laughed upon his breast to think
 Beast gave beast as much.
 I gave what other women gave
 "That stepped out of their clothes.
 But when this soul, its body off,
 Naked to naked goes,
 He it has found shall find therein
 What none other knows,
 And give his own and take his own
 And rule in his own right;
 And though it loved in misery
 Close and cling so tight,
 There's not a bird of day that dare
 Extinguish that delight.
 
 X
 MEETING
 
 HIDDEN by old age awhile
 In masker's cloak and hood,
 Each hating what the other loved,
 Face to face we stood:
 "That I have met with such,' said he,
 "Bodes me little good.'
 "Let others boast their fill,' said I,
 "But never dare to boast
 That such as I had such a man
 For lover in the past;
 Say that of living men I hate
 Such a man the most.'
 'A loony'd boast of such a love,'
 He in his rage declared:
 But such as he for such as me –
 Could we both discard
 This beggarly habiliment –
 Had found a sweeter word.
 
 XI
 FROM THE 'ANTIGONE'
 
 OVERCOME – O bitter sweetness,
 Inhabitant of the soft cheek of a girl –
 The rich man and his affairs,
 The fat flocks and the fields' fatness,
 Mariners, rough harvesters;
 Overcome Gods upon Parnassus;
 Overcome the Empyrean; hurl
 Heaven and Earth out of their places,
 That in the Same calamity
 Brother and brother, friend and friend,
 Family and family,
 City and city may contend,
 By that great glory driven wild.
 Pray I will and sing I must,
 And yet I weep – Oedipus' child
 Descends into the loveless dust.