Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/110

 Where art thou writhing? Herod's palace-floor Has fallen through: there shalt thou dance no more; And Herod is a worm now. In thy place, —Salome, Viper!—do thy coils yet keep That woman's flesh they bore with such a grace? Have thine eyes still the love-lure hidden deep, The ornament of tears, they could not weep?

Thou wast quite perfect in the splendid guile Of woman's beauty; thou hadst the whole smile That can dishonour heroes, and recal Fair saints prepared for heaven back to hell: And He, whose unlived glory thou mad'st fall All beautiful and spotless, at thy spell, Was great and fit for thee by whom he fell.

O, is it now sufficing sweet to thee— Through all the long uncounted years that see The undistinguished lost ones waste away— To twine thee, biting, on those locks that bleed, As bled they through thy fingers on that day? Or hast thou, all unhallowed, some fierce need Thy soul on his anointed grace to feed?