Even I, an ancient panderer, a prophet
impotent,
A sterile leaf unwrinkled by God’s fire,
Tonight feel in my sack-clothed loins
The stirrings of a new fermenting power
Raking the dull, dumbed embers of desire;
Even I grow restless and cannot sleep.
Come now, O foolish town! the night is soft
That wafts thee drunken to thy couch of
ease,
And is caressed with sighings, lispings of the
wind,
Which should instead rouse thee to a rage
of lust.
Thy Lord and Lover, know, is abroad this
night;
He could not sleep on Heaven’s couch, and
now He stands
Tiptoe upon His holy mountain, and He
breathes
Like a young breathless lover, His soft,
lisping sighs
Upon the winds, curling at the closed case
ments.
Unlock the bolted, double-barred doors,
And let thy panting Lover in.
O foolish town! dost think the mummied
mumblings
Of the priestly garments ere the scented
fires
Sacrificial of cinnamon and myrrh
Will satisfy the lust divine that burned
With passion’s fire on the unconsumed bush
Before the wondrous shepherd’s dazzled
eyes,
And breathed the echoed thunder “I shall”
That wed the Jews at Sinai’s mount?
O foolish town! that these dimly echoed
footfalls impotent
Might reverberate to thunderous pulsations
of desires
To chant thee to thy matrimonial bed
of joy.
Ah! but she sleeps, this foolish town, indeed,
Upon her couch of ease, while her Lord’s
sighings
Like wind-raked leaves die down the
watches
Of the night, unrecognized, unheard, and
He
Removes Himself alone to Heaven’s
Jerusalem.
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