II. II
"Qu'est ce qu'ils savent de l'amour, et
qu'est ce qu'ils peuvent comprendre?
S'ils ne comprennent pas la poè ie,
s'ils ne sentent pas la musique, qu'est ce
qu'ils peuvent comprendre de cette passion
en comparaison avec laquelle la ro e
est grossière et le parfum des violettes un
tonnerre?"
CAID ALI
FOR three years, diabolus in the scale,
He drank ambrosia,
All passes, ANANGKE prevails,
Came end, at last, to that Arcadia.
He had moved amid her phantasmagoria,
Amid her galaxies,
NUKTIS AGALMA
. . . . . .
Drifted . . . . drifted precipitate,
Asking time to be rid of . . . .
Of his bewilderment; to designate
His new found orchid. . . .
To be certain . . . . certain . . . .
(Amid ærial flowers) . . time for arrangements —
Drifted on
To the final estrangement;
Unable in the supervening blankness
To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff
Until he found his seive . . . .
Ultimately, his seismograph:
Given that is his "fundamental passion"
This urge to convey the relation
Of eye-lid and cheek-bone
By verbal manifestations;
To present the series
Of curious heads in medallion —
He had passed, inconscient, full gaze,
The wide-banded irises
And botticellian sprays implied
In their diastasis;
Which anæsthesis, noted a year late,
And weighed, revealed his great affect,
(Orchid), mandate
Of Eros, a retrospect.
. . .
Mouths biting empty air,
The still stone dogs,
Caught in metamorphosis, were
Left him as epilogues.
