You preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs

With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,

You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns,

You stop my heart and turn it into wood.

I serve not God, but make my idol fair

From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,

Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair

By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.

The long line of the sea, the straight horizon,

The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,

And moonlight clear as glass my great religion,

And sunrise falling on the quiet street.

The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay,

And lovers in the secret sheets of night

Trembling like instruments of music, till the day

Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.

Age creeps upon your timid little faces

Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,

Proud in the unimportance of your places

You sit in twilight prophesying woe.

So dim and false and grey, take my compassion,

I from my pageant golden as the day

Pity your littleness from all my passion,

Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!

We are the caretakers of empty houses,

The moon leans her slender body against the door,

But the lock is jarred with rust.

The sun looks in through the window,

But its closed shutters are as blinded eyes.

Our souls are full of dead and beautiful things

Like bowls of potpourri,

A dust of petals

Rustling through the tired fingers of a ghost.

From far away the lost adventures gleam,

The print of childhood's feet that dance and run,

The love of her who showed me to the sun

In triumph of creation, who did seem

With vivid spirit like a rainbow stream

To paint the shells, young blossoms, one by one

Each strange and delicate toy, whose hands have spun

The woven cloth of wonder like a dream ...

The row of soldiered books, authority

Sharp as the scales I strummed upon the keys,

The priest who damned the things I dared not praise,

Rebellion, love made sad with mystery—

And like a firefly through the twilit trees

Romance, the golden play-boy of my days.

Give me, O God, the power of laughter still,

I shall have need of humour, deftest foil

Against the army of infuriated