  It came to me in my sleep, And I rose in my sleep and went Out in the night to weep, Out where the trees were bent. With my soul, it seemed, I stood Alone in a wind-swept wood. And my soul said, gazing at me, "I will show you another land Different from that you see," And took into hers my hand.— We passed from the wood to a heath As starved as the ribs of Death. There, every leaf and the grass Was a thorn or a thistle hoar, The rocks rose mass on mass, Black bones on an iron moor. And my soul said, looking at me, "The past of your life you see." And a swineherd passed with his swine, Deformed, with the face of an owl; Two eyes of a wolfish shine Burned under his eyebrows foul. And my soul said, "This is the Lust, That soils my beauty with dust." Then a goose-wife hobbled by, On a crutch, with the devil's geese, A-mumbling that God is a lie, And cursing the world without cease. And my soul said, "This is Unfaith Who maketh me that which she saith." Then we came to a garden, close To a hollow of graves and tombs; A garden as red as a rose, Hung over of obscene glooms; The heart of each rose was a spark That smouldered or glared in the dark. And I was aware of a girl With a wild-rose face, who came, With a mouth like a shell's split pearl, Rose-clad in a robe of flame; And she plucked the roses and gave, And I was her veriest slave. She vanished. My lips would have kissed The flowers she gave me with sighs, But they writhed from my hands and hissed, In their hearts were a serpent's eyes. And my soul said, "Pleasure is she. The joys of the flesh you see." Then I bowed with a heart too weary, That longed to rest, to sleep; And it seemed in the darkness dreary I heard my sad heart weep; And my soul to the silence say,— "O God! for the break of day!" |
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