Classic Poem

This is of Lilith, by her Hebrew name
Lady of Night: she, in the delicate frame
that was of woman after, did unite
herself with Adam in unblest delight;
Who, uncapacious of that dreadful love,
begat on her not majesty, as Jove,
but the worm-brood of terrors unconfest
that chose henceforth, as their avoided nest,
the mire-fed writhen thicket of the mind.
She, monsterward from that embrace declined,
could change her to Chimera and inspire
doubt of his garden-state, exciting higher
the arrowy impulse to dim descried
o'erhuman bliss, as after, on the wide
way of his travail, with enticing strain
and hint of nameless things reveal'd, a bane
haunted, the fabled siren, and was seen
later as Lamia and Melusine,
and whatsoe'er of serpent-wives is feign'd,
or malice of the vampire-witch that drain'd
fresh blood of fresh-born babes, a wicked blast:
faces of fear, beheld along the past
and in the folk's scant fireside lore misread,
of her that is the august and only dread,
close-dwelling, in the house of birth and death,
and closer, in the secrets of our breath —
or love occult, whose smile eludes our sight
in her flung hair that is the starry night.