II
First: let us face the foemen, number them,
Measure their arms! Who smiteth us? We wove
In grove and garden many a diadem
Dewy with all the purity of love.
The Hermes of the orchard lets the string
Slip from his finger, and the arrow speeds
Striking our love beneath the flamy wing
So that the heart of heaven breaks and bleeds.
That poisoned shaft fed with corrupting germs
Hath stricken us to earth: the wound corrodes,
Breeding within us all its noisome worms,
All the black larvae of the accurst abodes:—
The virgin of our reed-shrill ecstasies
Raped by the stinking satyr of disease!
Measure their arms! Who smiteth us? We wove
In grove and garden many a diadem
Dewy with all the purity of love.
The Hermes of the orchard lets the string
Slip from his finger, and the arrow speeds
Striking our love beneath the flamy wing
So that the heart of heaven breaks and bleeds.
That poisoned shaft fed with corrupting germs
Hath stricken us to earth: the wound corrodes,
Breeding within us all its noisome worms,
All the black larvae of the accurst abodes:—
The virgin of our reed-shrill ecstasies
Raped by the stinking satyr of disease!
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