Till in the end, the Day of Days,
At judgment, one of his own race,
As frail and lost as you, shall rise,
His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf,
Might not the dial scorn itself
That has such hours to register?

Yet as to me, even so to her
Are golden sun and silver moon,
In daily largesse of earth's boon,
Counted for life-coins to one tune.
And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
Through some one man this life be lost,
Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?

Fair shines the gilded aureole In which our highest painters place Some living woman's simple face. And the stilled features thus descried As Jenny's long throat droops aside, The shadows where the cheeks are thin, And pure wide curve from ear to chin, With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand To show them to men's souls, might stand, Whole ages long, the whole world through, For preachings of what God can do. What has man done here? How atone, Great God, for this which man has done? And for the body and soul which by Man's pitiless doom must now comply With lifelong hell, what lullaby Of sweet forgetful second birth Remains? All dark. No sign on earth What measure of God's rest endows The many mansions of his house.

If but a woman's heart might see

Such erring heart unerringly
For once! But that can never be.

Like a rose shut in a book
In which pure women may not look,
For its base pages claim control

To crush the flower within the soul;

Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings, Pale as transparent psyche-wings,

To the vile text, are traced such things As might make lady's cheek indeed More than a living rose to read;

So nought save foolish foulness may Watch with hard eyes the sure decay; And so the life-blood of this rose, Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose; Yet still it keeps such faded show

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Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
Love roses better for its sake:

Only that this can never be:
Even so unto her sex is she.

Yet, Jenny, looking long at you, The woman almost fades from view. A cipher of man's changeless sum Of lust, past, present, and to come Is left. A riddle that one shrinks To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

Like a toad within a stone Seated while Time crumbles on;

Which sits there since the earth was curs'd

For Man's transgression at the first;
Which, living through all centuries,

Not once has seen the sun arise;

Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,

The earth's whole summers have not warmed;

Which always — whitherso the stone

Be flung sits there, deaf, blind, alone;

Aye, and shall not be driven out
Till that which shuts him round about
Break at the very Master's stroke,
And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
And the seed of Man vanish as dust:-
Even so within this world is Lust.

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