Page:The Century Of Life.pdf/60

 THE SPLENDID HARLOT

Victory ’s a harlot full of glorious lust Who secks the hero’s breast with wounds deef-scored, Hate’s passionate dints like love’s! So when the sword Has ploughed iis field, leap there she feels she must.

FATE

Lo, the moon who gives to healing herbs their virtue, nectar’s home, Food immortalising,—every wise physician’s radiant Som,* Even him consumption seizes in its cruel clinging arms. Then be ready! Fate takes all her toll and heeds not gifts nor charms.

THE TRANSIENCE OF WORLDLY REWARDS

Your gleaming palaces of brilliant stone, Your bright-limbed girls for grace and passion made, Your visible glory of dominion, Your sceptre and wide canopy displayed, These things you hold, but with what labour won Weaving with arduous toil a transient thread Of shining deeds on carcful virtue spun! Which easily broken, all at once is sped; As when in lover’s amorous war undone A pearl-string, on all sides the bright pearls shed Collapse and vanish from the unremembering sun.


 * Soma, the moon-god of the immortalising nectar, the Vedic Soma-wine.