Classic Poem

Cloth'd now with dark alone, O rose and balm,
whence unto world-sear'd youth is healing boon,
what lures the tense dark round thy pulsing calm?

Or does that flood-tide of luxurious noon,
richly distill'd for thy sweet nutriment,
now traitor, hearken to some secret moon.

Eve's wifely guise, her dower that Eden lent,
now limbeck where the enamour'd alchemist
invokes the rarer rose, phantom descent;

thy dewy essence where the suns persist
is alter'd by occult yet natural rite:
among thy leaves it was the night we kiss'd.

Rare ooze of odour drowns our faint delight,
some spilth of love that languishes unshared,
a rose that bleeds unseen, the heart of night;

whose sweetness holds us, wondering, ensnared:
for cunning she, the outcast, to entice
to wake with her, remembering how she fared

in times before our time, when Paradise
shone once, the dew-gem in her heart, and base
betrayal gave her to the malefice

that all thro' time afflicts her lonely face,
and all the mournful widowhood of night
closed round her, and the wilderness of space:

O bleeding rose, alone! O heart of night!