"To rend my breast? for I do feel a pulse
"Stir when I look into thy pure-barb'd eyes--
"O, am I breeding that false thing, a heart?
"Making my breast all tender for the fangs
"Of sharp Remorse to plunge their hot fire in.
"I am a certain dullard! Let me feel
"But one faint goad, fine as a needle's point,
"And it shall be the spur in my soul's side
"To urge the madd'ning thing across the jags
"And cliffs of life, into the soft embrace
"Of that cold mistress, who is constant too,
"And never flings her lovers from her arms--
"Not Death, for she is still a fruitful wife,
"Her spouse the Dead, and their cold marriage yields
"A million children, born of mould'ring flesh--
"So Death and Flesh live on--immortal they!
"I mean the blank-ey'd queen whose wassail bowl
"Is brimm'd from Lethe, and whose porch is red
"With poppies, as it waits the panting soul--
"She, she alone is great! No scepter'd slave
"Bowing to blind creative giants, she;
"No forces seize her in their strong, mad hands,
"Nor say, "'Do this--be that!'" Were there a God,
"His only mocker, she, great Nothingness!
"And to her, close of kin, yet lover too,
"Flies this large nothing that we call the soul."

* * * * *

"Doth true Love lonely grow?