This page has been validated.
THE GHOUL AND THE SERAPH
With frankincense from isles of India?Where flame-leaved forests infinitely teemWith palms of tremulous opal, from whose topAmbrosial honeys fall forevermoreIn rains of nacred light! Where rise and riseTerrace on hyacinthine terrace, hillsHung with the grapes that drip cerulean wine,One draught whereof dissolves eternityIn bliss oblivious and supernal dream!
THE GHOULTo all, the meat their bellies most commend,To all, the according wine: For me, I wot,The cates whereof thou braggest were as windIn halls where men had feasted yesterday,Or furbished bones the full hyena leaves:Tiger and pig have their apportioned glut,Nor lacks the shark his provender; the birdIs nourished with the worm of charnels; man,Or the grey wolf, will slay and eat the bird,Till wolf and man be carrion for the worm.What wouldst thou? As the elfin lily does,Or as the Paphian myrtle, pink with love,I draw me from the unreluctant deadThe rightful meat my belly's law demands.***Eaters of death are all: Life shall not live,Save that its food be death; No atomyIn any star, or heaven's remotest moon,But hath a billion billion times been madeThe food of insatiable life, and foodOf death insatiate: For all is change—Change, that hath wrought the chancre and the rose,And wrought the star, and wrought the sapphire-stone,And lit great altars, and the eyes of lions—Change, that hath made the very gods from slimeDrawn from the pits of Python, and will flingGods and their builded heavens back againTo slime. The fruits of archangelic light
96
