To trouble him in haven.  Thus his gaze
     Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue
     Was gifted to encourage and assure. 
     He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;
     And name it gratitude, the word is poor. 
     But name it gratitude, is aught as rare
     From sex to sex?  And let it have survived
     Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,
     Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived: 
     Unknown to Passion, generous for prey: 
     Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce. 
     Their tenderest of self did each one slay;
     His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;
     Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,
     Things living, slew they, and no artery bled. 
     A moment of some sacrificial smoke
     They passed, and were the dearer for their dead.

     He learnt how much we gain who make no claims. 
     A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire
     Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,
     Confessing; and its conjured image dire,
     Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;
     The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,
     Visioned to hold corrected and abashed
     Our senile emulous; which rolls its course
     Proud to the shattering end; with these few last
     Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice,
     Squeezed out in anguish:  all of that once vast! 
     And still, though having skin for man’s abuse,
     Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath
     Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,
     Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth
     Between the vivid lips; a vassal set;
     And numb, of formal value.  Are we true
     In nature, never natural thing repents;
     Albeit receiving punishment for due,
     Among the group of this world’s penitents;
     Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft
     Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.

     Our world believes it stabler if the soft
     Are whipped to show the face repentance wears. 
     Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,
     Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;
     Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom
     The chasm between our passions and our wits!

     Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,
     It trembles at betrayal of a sore. 
     Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose
     Impurities for clearness at the core.

     She to her hungered thundering in breast,
     ye shall not starve, not feebly designates
     The world repressing as a life repressed,
     Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates. 
     How Sin, amid the shades Cimmerian,
     Repents, she points for sight:  and she avers,
     The hoofed half-angel in the Puritan
     Nigh reads her when no brutish wrath deters.