IT is not long since, here among all these
folk
in London, I
should have held myself
of no account whatever,
but should have stood aside
and made them way
thinking that they, perhaps,
had more right than I — for who was
I?
Now I see them just the same, and watch
them.
But of what
account do I hold them?
Especially the young women. I look at them
as they dart and
flash
before the
shops, like wagtails on the edge of a
pool.
If I pass them close, or any man,
like sharp, slim wagtails
they flash a little aside
pretending to avoid us; yet all the
time
calculating.
They think that we adore them — alas, would
it
were
true!
Probably they think all men adore them,
howsoever they pass
by.
What is it, that, from their faces fresh as
spring,
such fair,
fresh, alert, first-flower faces,
like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman
hyacinths,
scyllas
and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim anemones,
even the sulphur
auriculas,
flowers
that come first from the darkness, and feel
cold to the
touch,
flowers
scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;
what is it, that, from the
faces of the fair young women
comes like a pungent scent, a vibration
beneath
that
startles me, alarms me, stirs up a
repulsion?
They are the issue of acrid winter, these first
—
flower young women;
their scent is lacerating and
repellant,
it
smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,
of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in
corruption;
it is
the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,
when destruction soaks
through the mortified,
decomposing earth,
and the last fires of
dissolution burn in the bosom
of the ground.
They are the flowers of ice-vivid
mortification,
thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,
with a loveliness I loathe;
for what kind of ice-rotten,
hot-aching heart
must they need to root in!