Rose & Liquor : The Wherefore

Heavy heart, by treach’ry’s canker chewed

Thy vitals gnawn by falsehood’s venomed fang

In cupid’s court my spirit was subdued

Where bells of feigned faith for ever rang

I am a pilgrim, spent and amortized

By fickle nymphs and punic oaths undone

My simple trust was cruelly capsized

Beneath the glaring of a pitiless sun

No more I seek the welkin’s azure glow

Nor halcyon days where golden fancies bloom

I crave but some sequestred cell to know

A quiet vault to cheat the impending doom

To find a beadroll where no grief is writ

And lay this mazard on a pillow cold

To let the flick’ring candle flame be quit

And shroud my sorrows in a woollen fold

I spied a closet, dim and far removed

A hermitage where silence kept the key

Far from the presence of the one I loved

And from the coil of mortal vanity

There did I sink in lethargy’s embrace

A cataphract of woe now stripped of mail

I sought to hide my tear-bedabbled face

Behind a thick and adamantine veil

But "Ate" rose from out the floorboards’ crack

And discord played a viol of jarring bone

The very beams began to strain and rack

And turned to briars my resting place of stone

The mew I chose became a frantic cage

Where hobgoblins of memory danced in spite

The air grew thick with ebullient rage

That choked the gasping throat of gentle night

A hubbub rose, a cacophony of dread

As though the firmament did surely burst

No peace was granted to this aching head

By malice and by ancient stars accurst

The coverture I sought was rent in twain

By tempest tost and sulfur breathing gales

I found but madness in the house of pain

And heard the sound of thousand ghostly wails

Thus is the wight by fortune quite forsook

Who seeks a respit from the lady’s scorn

For even in the shepherd’s quiet nook

The basilisk of chaos is reborn

My requiem is but a shriek of wind

My bed a bramble-bush of sharp despair

For he who hath in love so deeply sinned

Shall find a strait of lightning everywhere