Gave a sob: at the low sob a shower of stars Broke shuddering from heaven, pale flaming, and fell Where the mid-city roared as with rumours of wars.
"Be these God's tears?" I cried, as my tears 'gan to well. "Ah, Love, I have sought thee in temples and towers, In shrines where men pray, and in marts where they sell;
"In tapestried chambers made tropic with flowers, Where amber-haired women, soft breathing of spice, Lay languidly lapped in the gold-dropping showers
"Which gladdened and maddened their amorous eyes. I have looked for thee vainly in churches where beaming The Saints glowed embalmed in a prism of dyes,
"Where wave over wave the rapt music went streaming With breakers of sound in full anthems elate. I have asked, but none knew thee, or knew but thy seeming;
"A mask in thy likeness on high seats of state; And they bound it with gold, and they crowned it with glory, This thing they called love, which was bond slave to hate.
"And they bowed down before it with brown heads and hoary, They worshipped it nightly, loud hymning its praise, While out in the cold blast, none heeding its story,
"Love staggers, an outcast, with lust in its place." Love shivered and sighed like a reed that is shaken, And lifting his hunger-nipped face to my face:
"Nay, if of the world I must needs die forsaken, Say thou wilt not leave me to dearth and despair. To thy heart, to thy home, let the exile be taken,
"And feed me and shelter----" "Where, outcast, ah, where? Like thee I am homeless and spurned of all mortals; The House of my fathers yawns wide to the air.
"Stalks desolation across the void portals, Hope lies aghast on the ruinous floor, The halls that were thronged once with star-browed immortals,
"With gods statue-still o'er the world-whirr and roar, With fauns of the forest and nymphs of the river, Are cleft as if lightning had struck to their core.
"The luminous ceilings, where soaring for ever Dim hosts of plumed angels smoked up to the sky, With God-litten faces that yearned to the giver
"As vapours of morning the sun draws on high, Now ravaged with rain hear the hollow winds whistle Through rifts in the rafters which echo their cry.
"Blest walls that were vowed to the Virgin now bristle With weeds of sick scarlet and plague-spotted moss, And stained on the ground, choked with thorn and rank thistle,