Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/110

Where art thou writhing? Herod's palace-floor
Has fallen through: there shalt thou dance no more;
  And Herod is a worm now. In thy place,
—Salome, Viper!—do thy coils yet keep
  That woman's flesh they bore with such a grace?
Have thine eyes still the love-lure hidden deep,
The ornament of tears, they could not weep?

Thou wast quite perfect in the splendid guile
Of woman's beauty; thou hadst the whole smile
  That can dishonour heroes, and recal
Fair saints prepared for heaven back to hell:
  And He, whose unlived glory thou mad'st fall
All beautiful and spotless, at thy spell,
Was great and fit for thee by whom he fell.

O, is it now sufficing sweet to thee—
Through all the long uncounted years that see
  The undistinguished lost ones waste away—
To twine thee, biting, on those locks that bleed,
  As bled they through thy fingers on that day?
Or hast thou, all unhallowed, some fierce need
Thy soul on his anointed grace to feed?