Bitterness Of Death

I     Ah, stern, cold man,     How can you lie so relentless hard     While I wash you with weeping water!     Do you set your face against the daughter     Of life? Can you never discard     Your curt pride's ban?     You masquerader!     How can you shame to act this part     Of unswerving indifference to me?     You want at last, ah me!     To break my heart     Evader!     You know your mouth     Was always sooner to soften     Even than your eyes.     Now shut it lies     Relentless, however often     I kiss it in drouth.     It has no breath     Nor any relaxing. Where,     Where are you, what have you done?     What is this mouth of stone?     How did you dare     Take cover in death!     II     Once you could see,     The white moon show like a breast revealed     By the slipping shawl of stars.     Could see the small stars tremble     As the heart beneath did wield     Systole, diastole.     All the lovely macrocosm     Was woman once to you,     Bride to your groom.     No tree in bloom     But it leaned you a new     White bosom.     And always and ever     Soft as a summering tree     Unfolds from the sky, for your good,     Unfolded womanhood;     Shedding you down as a tree     Sheds its flowers on a river.     I saw your brows     Set like rocks beside a sea of gloom,     And I shed my very soul down into your thought;     Like flowers I fell, to be caught     On the comforted pool, like bloom     That leaves the boughs.     III     Oh, masquerader,     With a hard face white-enamelled,     What are you now?     Do you care no longer how     My heart is trammelled,     Evader?     Is this you, after all,     Metallic, obdurate     With bowels of steel?     Did you never feel? -     Cold, insensate,     Mechanical!     Ah, no! - you multiform,     You that I loved, you wonderful,     You who darkened and shone,     You were many men in one;     But never this null     This never-warm!     Is this the sum of you?     Is it all nought?     Cold, metal-cold?     Are you all told     Here, iron-wrought?     Is this what's become of you?