Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain?
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin; But thy sins, which are seventy times seven, Seven ages would fail thee to purge in, And then they would haunt thee in heaven: Fierce midnights and famishing morrows, And the loves that complete and control All the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows That wear out the soul.
O garment not golden but gilded, O garden where all men may dwell, O tower not of ivory, but builded By hands that reach heaven from hell; O mystical rose of the mire, O house not of gold but of gain, O house of unquenchable fire, Our Lady of Pain!
O lips full of lust and of laughter, Curled snakes that are fed from my breast, Bite hard, lest remembrance come after And press with new lips where you pressed. For my heart too springs up at the pressure, Mine eyelids too moisten and burn; Ah, feed me and fill me with pleasure, Ere pain come in turn.
In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows That smite not and bite not in play. The life and the love thou despisest, These hurt us indeed, and in vain, O wise among women, and wisest, Our Lady of Pain.
Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories
That stung thee, what visions that smote? Wert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores, When desire took thee first by the throat? What bud was the shell of a blossom That all men may smell to and pluck? What milk fed thee first at what bosom? What sins gave thee suck?
We shift and bedeck and bedrape us, Thou art noble and nude and antique; Libitina thy mother, Priapus Thy father, a Tuscan and Greek. We play with light loves in the portal, And wince and relent and refrain; Loves die, and we know thee immortal, Our Lady of Pain.
Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges; Thou art fed with perpetual breath, And alive after infinite changes, And fresh from the kisses of death; Of languors rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean, Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallid And poisonous queen.
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you? Men touch them, and change in a trice The lilies and languors of virtue For the raptures and roses of vice; Those lie where thy foot on the floor is, These crown and caress thee and chain, O splendid and sterile Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
There are sins it may be to discover, There are deeds it may be to delight. What new work wilt thou find for thy lover, What new passions for daytime or night? What spells that they know not a word of Whose lives are as leaves overblown? What tortures undreamt of, unheard of, Unwritten, unknown?
Ah beautiful passionate body
That never has ached with a heart! On thy mouth though the kisses are bloody, Though they sting till it shudder and smart, More kind than the love we adore is, They hurt not the heart or the brain, O bitter and tender Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
As our kisses relax and redouble, From the lips and the foam and the fangs Shall no new sin be born for men's trouble, No dream of impossible pangs? With the sweet of the sins of old ages Wilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore? Too sweet is the rind, say the sages, Too bitter the core.
Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time, And bared all thy beauties to one? Ah, where shall we go then for pastime, If the worst that can be has been done? But sweet as the rind was the core is; We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain.
By the hunger of change and emotion, By the thirst of unbearable things, By despair, the twin-born of devotion, By the pleasure that winces and stings, The delight that consumes the desire, The desire that outruns the delight, By the cruelty deaf as a fire And blind as the night,
By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
Through the kisses that blossom and bud, By the lips intertwisted and bitten Till the foam has a savour of blood, By the pulse as it rises and falters, By the hands as they slacken and strain, I adjure thee, respond from thine altars, Our Lady of Pain.
Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
The light fire in the veins of a boy? But he comes to thee sad, without feigning, Who has wearied of sorrow and joy; Less careful of labour and glory Than the elders whose hair has uncurled: And young, but with fancies as hoary And grey as the world.