Frost Flowers

It is not long since, here among all these folk     in London, I should have held myself     of no account whatever,     but should have stood aside and made them way     thinking that they, perhaps,     had more right than I - for who was I?     Now I see them just the same, and watch them.     But of what account do I hold them?     Especially the young women. I look at them     as they dart and flash     before the shops, like wagtails on the edge of a pool.     If I pass them close, or any man,     like sharp, slim wagtails they flash a little aside     pretending to avoid us; yet all the time     calculating.     They think that we adore them - alas, would it were true!     Probably they think all men adore them,     howsoever they pass by.     What is it, that, from their faces fresh as spring,     such fair, fresh, alert, first-flower faces,     like lavender crocuses, snowdrops, like Roman hyacinths,     scyllas and yellow-haired hellebore, jonquils, dim anemones,     even the sulphur auriculas,     flowers that come first from the darkness, and feel cold to the touch,     flowers scentless or pungent, ammoniacal almost;     what is it, that, from the faces of the fair young women     comes like a pungent scent, a vibration beneath     that startles me, alarms me, stirs up a repulsion?     They are the issue of acrid winter, these first- flower young women;     their scent is lacerating and repellant,     it smells of burning snow, of hot-ache,     of earth, winter-pressed, strangled in corruption;     it is the scent of the fiery-cold dregs of corruption,     when destruction soaks through the mortified, decomposing earth,     and the last fires of dissolution burn in the bosom of the ground.     They are the flowers of ice-vivid mortification,     thaw-cold, ice-corrupt blossoms,     with a loveliness I loathe;     for what kind of ice-rotten, hot-aching heart must they need to root in!