Who guts a drum to fetch a snappish groan: 
     For his fierce bugler horning onset, whom
     A truncheon-battered helmet caps . . . 
     The creature is of earnest mien
     To plead a sorrow darker than the tomb. 
     His Harp and Triangle, in tone subdued,
     He names; they are a rayless red and white;
     The dawn-hued libertine, the gibbous prude. 
     And, if we recognize his Tambourine,
     He asks; exhausted names her:  she has become
     A globe in cupolas; the blowziest queen
     Of overflowing dome on dome;
     Redundancy contending with the tight,
     Leaping the dam!  He fondly calls, his girl,
     The buxom tripper with the goblet-smile,
     Refreshful.  O but now his brows are dun,
     Bunched are his lips, as when distilling guile,
     To drop his venomous:  the Dame of dames,
     Flower of the world, that honey one,
     She of the earthly rose in the sea-pearl,
     To whom the world ran ocean for her kiss;
     He names her, as a worshipper he names,
     And indicates with a contemptuous thumb. 
     The lady meanwhile lures the mob, alike
     Ogles the bursters of the horn and drum. 
     Curtain her close! her open arms
     Have suckers for beholders:  she to this? 
     For that she could not, save in fury, hear
     A sharp corrective utterance flick
     Her idle manners, for the laugh to strike
     Beauty so breeding beauty, without peer
     Above the snows, among the flowers?  She reaps
     This mouldy garner of the fatal kick? 
     Gross with the sacrifice of Circe-swarms,
     Astarte of vile sweets that slay, malign,
     From Greek resplendent to Phoenician foul,
     The trader in attractions sinks, all brine
     To thoughts of taste; is ’t love?—­bark, dog! hoot, owl! 
     And she is blushless:  ancient worship weeps. 
     Suicide Graces dangle down the charms
     Sprawling like gourds on outer garden-heaps. 
     She stands in her unholy oily leer
     A statue losing feature, weather-sick
     Mid draggled creepers of twined ivy sere. 
     The curtain cried for magnifies to see! —
     We cannot quench our one corrupting glance: 
     The vision of the rumour will not flee. 
     Doth the Boy own such Mother?—­shoot his dart
     To bring her, countless as the crested deeps,
     Her subjects of the uncorrected heart? 
     False is that vision, shrieks the devotee;
     Incredible, we echo; and anew
     Like a far growling lightning-cloud it leaps. 
     Low humourist this leader seems; perchance
     Pitched from his University career,
     Adept at classic fooling.  Yet of mould
     Human those Gods were:  deathless too: 
     On high they not as meditatives paced: 
     Prodigiously they did the deeds of flesh: 
     Descending, they would touch the lowest here: