TO ONE IN ALIENATION
by: Arthur Symons (1865-1945)
I
- AST night I saw you decked to
meet
- The coming of those most reluctant feet:
- The little bonnet that you wear
- When you would fain, for his sake, be more fair;
- The primrose ribbons that so grace
- The perfect pallor of your face;
- The dark gown folded back about the throat,
- The folds of lacework that denote
- All that beneath them, just beneath them, lies,
- Waiting his eyes.
-
- So the man came and took you; and we lay
- So near and yet so far away,
- You in his arms, awake for joy, and I
- Awake for very misery,
- Cursing a sleepless brain that would but scrawl
- Your image on the aching wall,
- That would but pang me with the sense
- Of that most sweet accursed violence
- Of lovers' hands that weary to caress
- (Those hands!) your unforbidden loveliness.
-
- And with the dawn that vision came again
- To think your body, warm and white,
- Lay in his arms all night;
- That it was given him to surprise,
- With those unhallowed eyes,
- The secrets of your beauty, hid from me,
- That I may never (may I never?) see:
- I who adore you, he who finds in you
- (Poor child!) a half-forgotten point of view.
-
II
-
- As I lay on the stranger's bed,
- And clasped the stranger-woman I had hired,
- Desiring only memory dead
- Of all that I had once desired;
-
- It was then that I wholly knew
- How wholly I had loved you, and, my friend,
- While I am I, and you are you,
- How I must love you to the end.
-
- For I lay in her arms awake,
- Awake and cursing the indifferent night,
- That ebbed so slowly, for your sake,
- My heart's desire, my soul's delight;
-
- For I lay in her arms awake,
- Awake in such a solitude of shame,
- That when I kissed her, for your sake,
- My lips were sobbing on your name.
"To One in Alienation"
is reprinted from Poetica Erotica. Ed. T.R. Smith. New
York: Crown Publishers, 1921. |
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POEMS BY ARTHUR SYMONS |
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