  This is the end to which I come,— I who have loved beauty all my days: This grief of tortured flowers, This prison box devised by men, These nails and hasps and graven plates, This narrow room, these curious eyes, This tolling bell, These mumbled words miscalled of God, This brutal stone! O, rather, Love, Lay me on sweet-burning cedar, Free, fragrant with beaded pitch where the clean axe cut, With flame that leaps from singing heart of wood to mine! Then cast me as ash upon the quilted colors of the autumn hills, And I shall be pale lace of wind To kiss your lips, your eyes once more! Or strew me on water Till I know again its slipping hands of dream, And see its golden deep of sand shadowed with memories, And feel its cradling touch soft as your moving breast In closeness beyond the reach of words! Or toss me as a feather To some little shepherd moon and flock of stars Where, in the slow-rolling of prodigious hours Round the blown crust of other worlds, Space beyond space, I shall find you,—even as here! |
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