RETURNING, I find her just the
same,
At just the
same old delicate game.
Still she says: “Nay, loose no
flame
To lick me up
and do me harm!
Be
all yourself! — for oh, the charm
Of your heart of fire in which I
look!
Oh, better
there than in any book
Glow and enact the dramas and dreams
I love for ever! — there it
seems
You are
lovelier than life itself, till desire
Comes licking through the bars of your
lips
And over my
face the stray fire slips,
Leaving a burn and an ugly smart
That will have the oil of
illusion. Oh, heart
Of fire and beauty, loose no more
Your reptile flames of lust; ah,
store
Your passion
in the basket of your soul,
Be all yourself, one bonny, burning
coal
That stays with
steady joy of its own fire.
But do not seek to take me by
desire.
Oh, do not
seek to thrust on me your fire!
For in the firing all my porcelain
Of flesh does crackle and
shiver and break in pain,
My ivory and marble black with
stain,
My veil of
sensitive mystery rent in twain,
My altars sullied, I, bereft, remain
A priestess execrable, taken in
vain — “
So
the refrain
Sings
itself over, and so the game
Re-starts itself wherein I am kept
Like a glowing brazier faintly
blue of flame
So
that the delicate love-adept
Can warm her hands and invite her
soul,
Sprinkling
incense and salt of words
And kisses pale, and sipping the
toll
Of
incense-smoke that rises like birds.
Yet I’ve forgotten in playing this
game,
Things I have
known that shall have no name;
Forgetting the place from which I
came
I watch her
ward away the flame,
Yet warm herself at the fire — then blame
Me that I flicker in the
basket;
Me that I
glow not with content
To have my substance so subtly
spent;
Me that I
interrupt her game.
I ought to be proud that she should ask it
Of me to be her fire-opal —
.
It
is well
Since I am
here for so short a spell
Not to interrupt her? — Why should I
Break in by making any
reply!