Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
\nHard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
\nThe heavy white limbs, and the cruel
\nRed mouth like a venomous flower;
\nWhen these are gone by with their glories,
\nWhat shall rest of thee then, what remain,
\nO mystic and sombre Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain?<\/p>\n
Seven sorrows the priests give their Virgin;
\nBut thy sins, which are seventy times seven,
\nSeven ages would fail thee to purge in,
\nAnd then they would haunt thee in heaven:
\nFierce midnights and famishing morrows,
\nAnd the loves that complete and control
\nAll the joys of the flesh, all the sorrows
\nThat wear out the soul.<\/p>\n
O garment not golden but gilded,
\nO garden where all men may dwell,
\nO tower not of ivory, but builded
\nBy hands that reach heaven from hell;
\nO mystical rose of the mire,
\nO house not of gold but of gain,
\nO house of unquenchable fire,
\nOur Lady of Pain!<\/p>\n
O lips full of lust and of laughter,
\nCurled snakes that are fed from my breast,
\nBite hard, lest remembrance come after
\nAnd press with new lips where you pressed.
\nFor my heart too springs up at the pressure,
\nMine eyelids too moisten and burn;
\nAh, feed me and fill me with pleasure,
\nEre pain come in turn.<\/p>\n
In yesterday’s reach and to-morrow’s,
\nOut of sight though they lie of to-day,
\nThere have been and there yet shall be sorrows
\nThat smite not and bite not in play.
\nThe life and the love thou despisest,
\nThese hurt us indeed, and in vain,
\nO wise among women, and wisest,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Who gave thee thy wisdom? what stories
\nThat stung thee, what visions that smote?
\nWert thou pure and a maiden, Dolores,
\nWhen desire took thee first by the throat?
\nWhat bud was the shell of the blossom
\nThat all men may smell to and pluck?
\nWhat milk fed thee first at what bosom?
\nWhat sins gave thee suck?<\/p>\n
We shift and bedeck and bedrape us,
\nThou art noble and nude and antique;
\nLibitina thy mother, Priapus
\nThy father, a Tuscan and Greek.
\nWe play with light loves in the portal,
\nAnd wince and relent and refrain;
\nLoves die, and we know thee immortal,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;
\nThou art fed with perpetual breath,
\nAnd alive after infinite changes,
\nAnd fresh from the kisses of death;
\nOf languours rekindled and rallied,
\nOf barren delights and unclean,
\nThings monstrous and fruitless, a pallid
\nAnd poisonous queen.<\/p>\n
Could you hurt me, sweet lips, though I hurt you?
\nMen touch them, and change in a trice
\nThe lilies and languours of virtue
\nFor the raptures and roses of vice;
\nThose lie where thy foot on the floor is,
\nThese crown and caress thee and chain,
\nO splendid and sterile Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
There are sins it may be to discover,
\nThere are deeds it may be to delight.
\nWhat new work wilt thou find for thy lover,
\nWhat new passions for daytime or night?
\nWhat spells that they know not a word of
\nWhose lives are as leaves overblown?
\nWhat tortures undreamt of, unheard of,
\nUnwritten, unknown?<\/p>\n
Ah beautiful passionate body
\nThat never has ached with a heart!
\nOn thy mouth though the kisses are bloody,
\nThough they sting till it shudder and smart,
\nMore kind than the love we adore is,
\nThey hurt not the heart or the brain,
\nO bitter and tender Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
As our kisses relax and redouble,
\nFrom the lips and the foam and the fangs
\nShall no new sin be born for men’s trouble,
\nNo dream of impossible pangs?
\nWith the sweet of the sins of old ages
\nWilt thou satiate thy soul as of yore?
\nToo sweet is the rind, say the sages,
\nToo bitter the core.<\/p>\n
Hast thou told all thy secrets the last time,
\nAnd bared all thy beauties to one?
\nAh, where shall we go then for pastime,
\nIf the worst that can be has been done?
\nBut sweet as the rind was the core is;
\nWe are fain of thee still, we are fain,
\nO sanguine and subtle Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
By the hunger of change and emotion
\nBy the thirst of unbearable things,
\nBy despair, the twin-born of devotion
\nBy the pleasure that winces and stings,
\nThe delight that consumes the desire,
\nThe desire that outruns the delight,
\nBy the cruelty deaf as a fire
\nAnd blind as the night,<\/p>\n
By the ravenous teeth that have smitten
\nThrough the kisses that blossom and bud,
\nBy the lips intertwisted and bitten
\nTill the foam has a savour of blood,
\nBy the pulse as it rises and falters,
\nBy the hands as they slacken and strain,
\nI adjure thee, respond from thine altars,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Wilt thou smile as a woman disdaining
\nThe light fire in the veins of a boy?
\nBut he comes to thee sad, without feigning,
\nWho has wearied of sorrow and joy;
\nLess careful of labour and glory
\nThan the elders whose hair has uncurled;
\nAnd young, but with fancies as hoary
\nAnd grey as the world.<\/p>\n
I have passed from the outermost portal
\nTo the shrine where a sin is a prayer;
\nWhat care though the service be mortal?
\nO our Lady of Torture, what care?
\nAll thine the last wine that I pour is,
\nThe last in the chalice we drain,
\nO fierce and luxurious Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
All thine the new wine of desire,
\nThe fruit of four lips as they clung
\nTill the hair and the eyelids took fire,
\nThe foam of a serpentine tongue,
\nThe froth of the serpents of pleasure,
\nMore salt than the foam of the sea,
\nNow felt as a flame, now at leisure
\nAs wine shed for me.<\/p>\n
Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen,
\nMarked cross from the womb and perverse!
\nThey have found out the secret to cozen
\nThe gods that constrain us and curse;
\nThey alone, they are wise, and no other;
\nGive me place, even me, in their train,
\nO my sister, my spouse, and my mother,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
For the crown of our life as it closes
\nIs darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
\nNo thorns go as deep as a rose’s,
\nAnd love is more cruel than lust.
\nTime turns the old days to derision,
\nOur loves into corpses or wives;
\nAnd marriage and death and division
\nMake barren our lives.<\/p>\n
And pale from the past we draw nigh thee,
\nAnd satiate with comfortless hours;
\nAnd we know thee, how all men belie thee,
\nAnd we gather the fruit of thy flowers;
\nThe passion that slays and recovers,
\nThe pangs and the kisses that rain
\nOn the lips and the limbs of thy lovers,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
The desire of thy furious embraces
\nIs more than the wisdom of years,
\nOn the blossom though blood lie in traces,
\nThough the foliage be sodden with tears.
\nFor the lords in whose keeping the door is
\nThat opens to all who draw breath
\nGave the cypress to love, my Dolores,
\nThe myrtle to death.<\/p>\n
And they laughed, changing hands in the measure,
\nAnd they mixed and made peace after strife;
\nPain melted in tears, and was pleasure;
\nDeath mingled with blood, and was life.
\nLike lovers they melted and tingled,
\nIn the dusk of thine innermost fane;
\nIn the darkness they murmured and mingled,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
In a twilight where virtues are vices,
\nIn thy chapels, unknown of the sun,
\nTo a tune that enthralls and entices,
\nThey were wed, and the twain were as one.
\nFor the tune from thine altar hath sounded
\nSince God bade the world’s work begin,
\nAnd the fume of thine incense abounded,
\nTo sweeten the sin.<\/p>\n
Love listens, and paler than ashes,
\nThrough his curls as the crown on them slips,
\nLifts languid wet eyelids and lashes,
\nAnd laughs with insatiable lips.
\nThou shalt hush him with heavy caresses,
\nWith music that scares the profane;
\nThou shalt darken his eyes with thy tresses,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Thou shalt bind his bright eyes though he wrestle,
\nThou shalt chain his light limbs though he strive;
\nIn his lips all thy serpents shall nestle,
\nIn his hands all thy cruelties thrive.
\nIn the daytime thy voice shall go through him,
\nIn his dreams he shall feel thee and ache;
\nThou shalt kindle by night and subdue him
\nAsleep and awake.<\/p>\n
Thou shalt touch and make redder his roses
\nWith juice not of fruit nor of bud;
\nWhen the sense in the spirit reposes,
\nThou shalt quicken the soul through the blood.
\nThine, thine the one grace we implore is,
\nWho would live and not languish or feign,
\nO sleepless and deadly Dolores,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Dost thou dream, in a respite of slumber,
\nIn a lull of the fires of thy life,
\nOf the days without name, without number,
\nWhen thy will stung the world into strife;
\nWhen, a goddess, the pulse of thy passion
\nSmote kings as they revelled in Rome;
\nAnd they hailed thee re-risen, O Thalassian,
\nFoam-white, from the foam?<\/p>\n
When thy lips had such lovers to flatter;
\nWhen the city lay red from thy rods,
\nAnd thine hands were as arrows to scatter
\nThe children of change and their gods;
\nWhen the blood of thy foemen made fervent
\nA sand never moist from the main,
\nAs one smote thm, their lord and thy servant,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
On sands by the storm never shaken,
\nNor wet from the washing of tides;
\nNor by foam of the waves overtaken,
\nNor winds that the thunder bestrides;
\nBut red from the print of thy paces,
\nMade smooth for the world and its lords,
\nRinged round with a flame of fair faces,
\nAnd splendid with swords.<\/p>\n
There the gladiator, pale for thy pleasure,
\nDrew bitter and perilous breath;
\nThere torments laid hold on the treasure
\nOf limbs too delicious for death;
\nWhen the gardens were lit with live torches;
\nWhen the world was a steed for thy rein;
\nWhen the nations lay prone in thy porches,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
When, with flame all around him aspirant,
\nStood flushed, as a harp-player stands,
\nThe implacable beautiful tyrant,
\nRose-crowned, having death in his hands;
\nAnd a sound as the sound of loud water
\nSmote far through the flight of the fires,
\nAnd mixed with the lightning of slaughter
\nA thunder of lyres.<\/p>\n
Dost thou dream of what was and no more is,
\nThe old kingdoms of earth and the kings?
\nDost thou hunger for these things, Dolores,
\nFor these, in a new world of things?
\nBut thy bosom no fasts could emaciate,
\nNo hunger compel to complain
\nThose lips that no bloodshed could satiate,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
As of old when the world’s heart was lighter,
\nThrough thy garments the grace of thee glows,
\nThe white wealth of thy body made whiter
\nBy the blushes of amorous blows,
\nAnd seamed with sharp lips and fierce fingers,
\nAnd branded by kisses that bruise;
\nWhen all shall be gone that now lingers,
\nAh, what shall we lose?<\/p>\n
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,
\nAnd thy limbs are as melodies yet,
\nAnd move to the music of passion,
\nWith lithe and lascivious regret.
\nWhat ailed us, O gods, to desert you
\nFor creeds that refuse and restrain?
\nCome down and redeem us from virtue,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
All shrines that were Vestal are flameless,
\nBut the flame has not fallen from this;
\nThough obscure be the god, and though nameless
\nThe eyes and the hair that wqe kiss;
\nLow fires that love sits by and forges
\nFresh heads for his arrows and thine;
\nHair loosened and soiled in mid orgies
\nWith kisses and wine.<\/p>\n
Thy skin changes country and colour,
\nAnd shrivels or swells to a snake’s.
\nLet it brighten and bloat and grow duller,
\nWe know it, the flames and the flakes,
\nRed brands on it smitten and bitten,
\nRound skies where a star is a stain,
\nAnd the leaves with thy litanies written,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
On thy bosom though many a kiss be,
\nThere are none such as knew it of old.
\nWas it Alciphron once or Arisbe,
\nMale ringlets or feminine gold,
\nThat thy lips met with under the statue,
\nWhence a look shot out sharp after thieves
\nFrom the eyes of the garden-god at you
\nAcross the fig-leaves?<\/p>\n
Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
\nOne god had a wreath to his shrine;
\nThen love was the pearl of his oyster,
\nAnd Venus rose red out of wine,
\nWe have all done amiss, choosing rather
\nSuch loves as the wise gods disdain;
\nIntercede for us thou with thy father,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
In spring he had crowns of his garden,
\nRed corn in the heat of the year,
\nThen hoary green olives that harden
\nWhen the grape-blossom freezes with fear;
\nAnd milk-budded myrtles with Venus
\nAnd vine-leaves with Bacchus he trod;
\nAnd ye said, “We have seen, he hath seen us,
\nA visible God.”<\/p>\n
What broke off the garlands that girt you?
\nWhat sundered you spirit and clay?
\nWeak sins yet alive are as virtue
\nTo the strength of the sins of that day.
\nFor dried is the blood of thy lover,
\nIpsithilla, contracted the vein;
\nCry aloud, “Will he rise and recover,
\nOur Lady of Pain?”<\/p>\n
Cry aloud; for the old world is broken;
\nCry out; for the Phrygian is priest,
\nAnd rears not the bountiful token
\nAnd spreads not the fatherly feast.
\nFrom the midmost of Ida, from shady
\nRecesses that murmur at morn,
\nThey have brought and baptized her, Our Lady,
\nA goddess new-born.<\/p>\n
And the chaplets of old are above us,
\nAnd the oyster-bed teems out of reach;
\nOld poets outsing and outlove us,
\nAnd Catullus makes mouths at our speech.
\nWho shall kiss, in thy father’s own city,
\nWith such lips as he sang with, again?
\nIntercede for us all of thy pity,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Out of Dindymus heavily laden
\nHer lions draw bound and unfed
\nA mother, a mortal, a maiden,
\nA queen over death and the dead.
\nShe is cold, and her habit is lowly,
\nHer temple of branches and sods;
\nMost fruitful and virginal, holy,
\nA mother of gods.<\/p>\n
She hath wasted with fire thine high places,
\nShe hath hidden and marred and made sad
\nThe fair limbs of the Loves, the fair faces
\nOf gods that were goodly and glad.
\nShe slays, and her hands are not bloody;
\nShe moves as a moon in the wane,
\nWhite-robed, and thy raiment is ruddy,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
They shall pass and their places be taken,
\nThe gods and the priests that are pure,
\nThey shall pass, and shalt thou not be shaken?
\nThey shall perish, and shalt thou endure?
\nDeath laughs, breathing close and relentless
\nIn the nostrils and eyelids of lust,
\nWith a pinch in his fingers of scentless
\nAnd delicate dust.<\/p>\n
But the worm shall revive thee with kisses;
\nThou shalt change and transmute as a god,
\nAs the rod to a serpent that hisses,
\nAs the serpent again to a rod.
\nThy life shall not cease though thou doff it;
\nThou shalt live until evil be slain,
\nAnd the good shall die first, said thy prophet,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Did he lie? did he laugh? does he know it,
\nNow he lies out of reach, out of breath,
\nThy prophet, thy preacher, thy poet,
\nSin’s child by incestuous Death?
\nDid he find out in fire at his waking,
\nOr discern as his eyelids lost light,
\nWhen the bands of his body were breaking
\nAnd all came in sight?<\/p>\n
Who has known all the evil before us,
\nOr the tyrannous secrets of time?
\nThough we match not the dead men that bore us
\nAt a song, at a kiss, at a crime –
\nThough the heathen outface and outlive us,
\nAnd our lives and our longings are twain –
\nAh, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
Who are we that embalm and embrace thee
\nWith spices and savours of song?
\nWhat is time, that his children should face thee?
\nWhat am I, that my lips do thee wrong?
\nI could hurt thee – but pain would delight thee;
\nOr caress thee – but love would repel;
\nAnd the lovers whose lips would excite thee
\nAre serpents in hell.<\/p>\n
Who now shall content thee as they did,
\nThy lovers, when temples were built
\nAnd the hair of the sacrifice braided
\nAnd the blood of the sacrifice spilt,
\nIn Lampsacus fervent with faces,
\nIn Aphaca red from thy reign,
\nWho embraced thee with awful embraces,
\nOur Lady of Pain?<\/p>\n
Where are they, Cotytto or Venus,
\nAstarte or Ashtaroth, where?
\nDo their hands as we touch come between us?
\nIs the breath of them hot in thy hair?
\nFrom their lips have thy lips taken fever,
\nWith the blood of their bodies grown red?
\nHast thou left upon earth a believer
\nIf these men are dead?<\/p>\n
They were purple of raiment and golden,
\nFilled full of thee, fiery with wine,
\nThy lovers, in haunts unbeholden,
\nIn marvellous chambers of thine.
\nThey are fled, and their footprints escape us,
\nWho appraise thee, adore, and abstain,
\nO daughter of Death and Priapus,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n
What ails us to fear overmeasure,
\nTo praise thee with timorous breath,
\nO mistress and mother of pleasure,
\nThe one thing as certain as death?
\nWe shall change as the things that we cherish,
\nShall fade as they faded before,
\nAs foam upon water shall perish,
\nAs sand upon shore.<\/p>\n
We shall know what the darkness discovers,
\nIf the grave-pit be shallow or deep;
\nAnd our fathers of old, and our lovers,
\nWe shall know if they sleep not or sleep.
\nWe shall see whether hell be not heaven,
\nFind out whether tares be not grain,
\nAnd the joys of the seventy times seven,
\nOur Lady of Pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour; The heavy white limbs, and the cruel Red mouth like a venomous flower; When these are gone by with their glories, What shall rest of thee then, what remain, O mystic and sombre Dolores, Our Lady of Pain? Seven sorrows […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[94,93],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poems","tag-kinky-sex","tag-masochism","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":228,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kuny.ca\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}