I
Thou shalt rejoice for woe:
The pallid goblet old,
That holds thy life's dull wine,
Is made thereby divine;
Stain'd with a purpler glow,
And wrought in stranger gold.
II
From the suck'd lees of pain,
We have won joy again:
Death shall thee not distress:
That sleepy bitterness
To thy kist lips shall be
The supreme exstasy.
III
Put ashes on your golden body bare,
Puissant as musk, bitter-sweet as to die,
Ashes upon your arms that grow not old,
And on your unassuaged lips of gold:
So we will wanton in love's sepulchre,
And mock the face of Death with blasphemy.
IV
I love you more than Death: your mournful head,
Your shrouding hair, and your unfathom'd eyes,
And your white body beautiful, alas,
Priestess and victim in love's holy mass....
Your flesh that loves, and loving ever dies....
I could not love you more if you were dead.
V
Death is death; the little host that squirms,
The smell, the dark, the coffin clos'd, and I
So soft, so soft; no movement, and no breath;
No ears, no nose, no eyeballs; Death is Death;
The sepulchre, no sight, no sound, no cry,
And always; Death is Death; the worms! the worms
VI
Not for your evil is my spirit sad—
I mourn because you are not really bad;
Because your beauty's perfect cruelty
Is ever marr'd with pity and distress,
And you still show within your wickedness
The poor stale weakness of humanity.
VII
I am as one that thirsteth for all things,
As one that holdeth to his lips the cup,
With lower'd eyes searching the wine's dull flame.
No thing may I refuse among all things,
Till, having drain'd unto its dregs the cup,
I may return into the astral flame.
VIII
Heart, we have wholly drain'd the cup of sadness,
And found in sadness no reality;
Now from the night of sadness let us go.
Henceforward let us drain the cup of gladness,
And find in gladness no reality;
From sadness then and gladness let us go.