The adored, wild, strange, irresistible...

The adored, wild, strange, irresistible,

How they fail one at the last!

What is there in your faces

That we should worship with our souls?

Most lovable, perfidious,

Vague —

Molesting even our visions

With treacherous pathos.

O vulgarity, mediocrity, stupidity,

What is it in you that makes us lavish our love,

Covering your meagre bodies

With our passionate mantle, dyed with blood and dreams?

Life and its grey days, and time

Are a thin curtain through which you shadow,

Or a dim glass through which you peer.

You climb in at the windows of our souls

With ladders and stratagems,

You mope in corners with reproachful eyes.

But what do you do for us

Lute players, dancers, deceivers,

Other than lie with red lips

And cajole with tears of beryl?

People —

Men and women with laughable, tragic faces

Winking at love,

Treading our songs and illusions

Under petulant feet!