Song

Stranger, you who hide my love In the curved cheek of a smile And sleep with her upon a tongue Of soft lies that beguile, Your paradisal ecstasy Is justified is justified By hunger of the beasts beneath The overhanging cloud Who to snatch quick pleasures run Before their momentary sun Be eclipsed by death. Lightly, lightly from my sleep She stole, our vows of dew to break Upon a day of melting rain Another love to take: Her happy happy perfidy Was justified was justified Since compulsive needs of sense Clamour to be satisfied And she was never one to miss Plausible happiness Of a new experience. I, who stand beneath a bitter Blasted tree, with the green life Of summer joy cut from my side By that self-justifying knife, In my exiled misery Were justified were justified If upon two lives I preyed Or punished with my suicide, Or murdered pity in my heart Or two other lives did part To make the world pay what I paid. Oh, but supposing that I climb Alone to a high room of clouds Up a ladder of the time And lie upon a bed alone And tear a feather from a wing And listen to the world below And write round my high paper walls Anything and everything Which I know and do not know!