*She breathes and flirts with my loneliness,
Drinking from the last lights of heaven.
She weaves and braids a wreath of weariness
As Nyx drops a grey cloak o'er the even
And hides Pans' wild heaths and gardens carven.
Pale spirits drenched in afternoon rain
Flee, from the peerless eyes, driven
By other senses, less fickle, less vain
And who sing in a sweeter tongue of the pain
As Aoelus revets a mantle of shadows
And raving fragrances burst into the night,
She takes my hand, and leads me through the echoes
To her dominion, where she flaunts her might.
Here she commands genii to an aery flight,
Possessing the high grasses into a trance,
An angry hoard, out to a ghostly fight,
Their spears, like white fires, swirl and dance,
Puppets in a belligerent romance.
Over this multitude, pale and hectic red,
Cairns stand, overgrown with moss and flowers,
Silent guardians of childhood mirth long fled.
Over these, do I feel, the weight of hours
For the first time. Her touch shrivels and sours
Over my skin, as locks of a wailing cloud
Prophesy of black rain, of bleak powers,
And of the dark hours that enshroud
The lost joys, forever broken and bowed.*