1577

Morning is due to all—
To some—the Night—
To an imperial few—
The Auroral light.

You worth more than a thousand golden crowns
and continent wide silks
and all the brighter, wilting stars in the dark
and had you pulled the universe to you,
it will surely crawl under your thigh
as a machination made only for you.

And you worth more than the ten thousand horses that I had slain
and I pulled them onto your sheets
as whispery faeries gnawed onto its skin
onto its slippery vein
gory, but lovely all the same.

Alas, you worth more than another ten thousand of them running
hooves clattered across the impenetrable glass of auroral dome
and I saw you rode on another ten thousand that had not deserve you-

as you deserved gold and stars
and all the greater fury of this land,
not treachery and I.
Gold was the color of your ruse
and your words deify scorching stars into bloom
and you reek of rust — the finest yellow there was.

1335

Let me not mar that perfect Dream
By an Auroral stain
But so adjust my daily Night
That it will come again.

Not when we know, the Power accosts—
The Garment of Surprise
Was all our timid Mother wore
At Home—in Paradise.