Works

This morning in my attic high
The Demon came to visit me,
And seeking faults in my reply,
He said: "I would inquire of thee,

"Of all the beauties which compose
Her charming body's potent spell,...

Mostly in a dull rotation
We bear our loads and eat and drink and sleep.
Feeling no tears, knowing no meditation,
Too tired to think, too clogged with earth to weep.
...

There beyond my window ledge,
Heaped against the sky, a hedge
Of huge and waving tree-tops stands
With multitudes of fluttering hands.

Wave they, beat they, to and fro,...

In this house, she said, in this high second storey,
In this room where we sit, above the midnight street,
There runs a rivulet, narrow but very rapid,
Under the still floor and your unconscious feet.
...

Blood, hatred, appetite and apathy,
The sodden many and the struggling strong,
Who care not now though for another wrong
Another myriad innocents should die.
At candid savagery or oily lie...

The old yellow stucco
Of the time of the Regent
Is flaking and peeling:
The rows of square windows
In the straight yellow building
Are empty and still;
And the dusty dark evergreens...