Then from that day, he used his soul
As bitters to the over dulcet sins,
As olives to the fatness of the feast--
She made those dear heart-breaking ecstasies
Of minor chords amid the Phrygian flutes,
She sauced his sins with splendid memories,
Starry regrets and infinite hopes and fears;
His holy youth and his first love
Made pearly background to strange-coloured vice.
Sin is no sin when virtue is forgot.
It is so good in sin to keep in sight
The white hills whence we fell, to measure by--
To say I was so high, so white, so pure,
And am so low, so blood-stained and so base;
I revel here amid the sweet sweet mire
And yonder are the hills of morning flowers;
So high, so low; so lost and with me yet;
To stretch the octave 'twixt the dream and deed,
Ah, that's the thrill!
To dream so well, to do so ill,--
There comes the bitter-sweet that makes the sin.
First drink the stars, then grunt amid the mire,
So shall the mire have something of the stars,
And the high stars be fragrant of the mire.
The Decadent was speaking to his soul--
Dear witch, I said the body was enough.
How young, how simple as a suckling child!
And then I dreamed--'an incest 'twixt the body and the soul:'
Let's wed, I thought, the seraph with the dog,
And wait the purple thing that shall be born.
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