Self And Soul

It came to me in my sleep, And I rose in my sleep and went Out in the night to weep, Out where the trees were bent. With my soul, it seemed, I stood Alone in a wind-swept wood.

And my soul said, gazing at me, "I will show you another land Different from that you see," And took into hers my hand.-- We passed from the wood to a heath As starved as the ribs of Death.

There, every leaf and the grass Was a thorn or a thistle hoar, The rocks rose mass on mass, Black bones on an iron moor. And my soul said, looking at me, "The past of your life you see."

And a swineherd passed with his swine, Deformed, with the face of an owl; Two eyes of a wolfish shine Burned under his eyebrows foul. And my soul said, "This is the Lust, That soils my beauty with dust."

Then a goose-wife hobbled by, On a crutch, with the devil's geese, A-mumbling that God is a lie, And cursing the world without cease. And my soul said, "This is Unfaith Who maketh me that which she saith."

Then we came to a garden, close To a hollow of graves and tombs; A garden as red as a rose, Hung over of obscene glooms; The heart of each rose was a spark That smouldered or glared in the dark.

And I was aware of a girl With a wild-rose face, who came, With a mouth like a shell's split pearl, Rose-clad in a robe of flame; And she plucked the roses and gave, And I was her veriest slave.

She vanished. My lips would have kissed The flowers she gave me with sighs, But they writhed from my hands and hissed, In their hearts were a serpent's eyes. And my soul said, "Pleasure is she. The joys of the flesh you see."

Then I bowed with a heart too weary, That longed to rest, to sleep; And it seemed in the darkness dreary I heard my sad heart weep; And my soul to the silence say,-- "O God! for the break of day!"