Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/211
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Are mottled with its shadow. Lock the doors
And blind the windows but I still can see
The flicker of its poison burn towards me.
And then that odor—almost as if slime
Could ooze along the air. Many a time
Those sluggish sweetnesses uncoil and creep
Upstairs to slink into my very sleep. . . . . .
I guess you're right—fancies like these are bad,
And apt to make folks think you're kind of mad.
But they're familiar ones to me, you know—
I plucked that lily twenty years ago.
And blind the windows but I still can see
The flicker of its poison burn towards me.
And then that odor—almost as if slime
Could ooze along the air. Many a time
Those sluggish sweetnesses uncoil and creep
Upstairs to slink into my very sleep. . . . . .
I guess you're right—fancies like these are bad,
And apt to make folks think you're kind of mad.
But they're familiar ones to me, you know—
I plucked that lily twenty years ago.
Contemporary VerseWinifred Welles
IMPLACABLE BEAUTY
On the wide waste the web of twilight trembling,
Hangs low with stars and night,
The dying day, in the worn west dissembling,
Crowns his defeat with light.
Hangs low with stars and night,
The dying day, in the worn west dissembling,
Crowns his defeat with light.
Here by the sands and dunes my soul sinks crying,
By beauty stabbed to death—
"O in the dusk of the world let me too, dying,
Mingle with these my breath!"
By beauty stabbed to death—
"O in the dusk of the world let me too, dying,
Mingle with these my breath!"
There is no answer. In the cold heavens shining,
Star trembles unto star;
The virgin moon in the clear west declining
Hangs, like a scimitar.
Star trembles unto star;
The virgin moon in the clear west declining
Hangs, like a scimitar.
Contemporary VerseJohn Hall Wheelock
196