BEAUTIOUS BEING

Against the snow of Being a high-statured Beauty. Whistlings of death and circles of secret music make the adored body, like a specter, rise, expand, and quiver; wounds of black and scarlet burst in the superb flesh. — Life's own colors darken, dance, and drift around the Visionin the making. — Shudders rise and rumble, and the delerious savor of these effects clashing with the deadly hissings and the hoarse music that the world, far behind us, hurls at our mother of beauty, — she recoils, she rears up. Oh, our bones are clothed with an amorous new body.

O the ashy faces, the crined escutcheon, the crystal arms! the cannon on which I am to fall in the melee of trees and of light air!