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Show THE CANDLE AND THE FLAME. (By George Sylvester Viereck.) Thy hands are like cool herbs that bring Balm to men's hearts upon them laid; Thy lovely-petaled lips are made As any flower of the Spring, But in thine eyes there is a thing, O Love, that makes me half afraid. For they are old, those eyes. They gleam Between the waking and the dream With secret wisdom, like a bright Torch from behind the temple's heavy veil That beckons to the acolyte Who prays with trembling lips and pale In the long watches of the night. They are old as life. They wore When proud Gomorrah reared its head A new-born city. They were there When in the places of the dead They swathed the body of the Lord They gazed on Pa-Wak raise the wall Of China. They saw Carthage fall, And grim Attila lead his horde. There is no secret anywhere Nor any grief or shame that lies Not writ somehow in those child eyes Of thine, O Love, in some strange wise. Thou art the lad Endymion, And that great queen with spice and myrrh From Araby, whom Solomon Delighted, and the lust of her. The warriors marching from the sea With Caesar's cohorts sang of thee, How thy fair head was more to him Than all tho land of Brittany. Yea, in the old days, thou wast she Who lured Mark Antony from home To death in Egypt, seeing ho Lost love when he lost Rome. Thou saw'st old Tubal strike the lyre, Yea, first for thee the poet hurled Defiance at God's starry choir; Thou art the romance and tho fire, Thou art the pageant and the strife, Tho clamor mounting high and higher From all the lovers in the world To all the lords of love and life. Oft through thine exquisite long lashes Across, the pallor of thy face, The fire of primal passion flashes That is as ancient as the race, But we, that live a little space, Which, when beholding, feel in it The horror of the Infinite. Perhaps the passions of mankind Are but tho torches mystical Lit by some spirit hand to find The presence of the Master Mind That knows the secret of it all In the great darkness and the wind. We are the candle, Love the flame Each separate living light burns out Love, being deathless, is the same. When of life's fover we shall tire It will desert, and tho fire Rekindle now in prince or lout. Twin-born of knowledge and of lust It was before us. It shall be Indifferent still of thee and mo When shattered is life's golden cup, When thy young limbs are shriveled up, And when my heart is turned to dust. Ney, sweet, ,smilG not, to know at last j That thou or 1 or knave or fool Are hut the involltient tool Of some world purpose vague and vast. No har to passion's fury set, With monstrous popples spice the wine, For only drunk are we divine, And only mad shall we forget! Smart Set. |