Nay! Death sets riddles for desire to spell,
Responsive. What red hem earth's passion sews,
But may be ravenously unripped in hell?

* * * * *




NEPHELIDIA


From the depth of the dreamy decline of the dawn through a notable nimbus
of nebulous noonshine,
Pallid and pink as the palm of the flag-flower that flickers with fear
of the flies as they float,
Are they looks of our lovers that lustrously lean from a marvel of mystic
miraculous moonshine,
These that we feel in the blood of our blushes that thicken and threaten
with throbs through the throat?
Thicken and thrill as a theatre thronged at appeal of an actor's appalled
agitation,
Fainter with fear of the fires of the future than pale with the promise
of pride in the past;
Flushed with the famishing fullness of fever that reddens with radiance
of rathe recreation,
Gaunt as the ghastliest of glimpses that gleam through the gloom of
the gloaming when ghosts go aghast?
Nay, for the nick of the tick of the time is a tremulous touch on the
temples of terror,