Not this week nor this month dare I lie down

To one in dearthOf life and its laughter,Nor the sweet murderDealt slow and evenUnto the martyrSmiling at heaven:It is the smileFaint as a (waning) myth,Faint, and exceeding smallOn a boy’s murdered mouth.

And as they sojourned both of them together,Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,Behold the preparations, fire and iron,But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,And builded parapets and trenches there,And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,Saying,…

Sleep took him by the brow and laid him back.There, in the happy no-time of his sleeping,Death took him by the heart. There heaved a quakingOf the aborted life within him leaping,Then chest and sleepy arms once more fell slack.And soon the slow, stray blood came creepingFrom the intruding lead, like ants on track.Whether his…

An appearance of a titan’s grave,And the length thereof a thousand miles,It crossed all Europe like a mystic road,Or as the Spirits’ Pathway lieth on the night.And I heard a voice cryingThis is the Path of Glory.

I shook, and was uneasy as a treeThat draws the brilliant danger, tremulous, bowed.So must I tempt that face to loose its lightning.Great gods, whose beauty is death, will laugh above,Who made his beauty lovelier than love.I shall be bright with their unearthly brightening.And happier were it if my sap consume;Glorious will shine the opening…

Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ teeth wicked?Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?Ever from their hair and through their hands’ palmsMisery swelters. Surely we have perishedSleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?-These are men whose minds the Dead…