The Story
of Saville
IV.
To women alone doth love, bright love, come as a perfect joy,
A lily uncankered, pure virgin gold, flawless and free from alloy,—
Faithfully, gladly they serve, who win, for tending the boy god’s flame,
Guerdon of agonized travail and death and often a pilloried shame,—
They, sweet souls, do rapturous leap at the sound of Love’s entering,
Ask not where he has hidden his lash, but worship and crown him king.
Men, it may be, have a loftier look, a glimpse of the anguish and tears,
And see in the baby’s bassinette the corpse of seventy years,
The rift that must come in the lute at last, the worm that works in the bud,—
However it be, I only know their love is a vice in the blood,
A season of poignant tormenting, of pleasure elusive and vague,
A maelstrom engulfing, to be forever dreaded and shunned like the plague,—
To men, pink palpitant Eros seems a skeleton earthily gaunt,
