strife of the dead who is
    dumb as the dust-heaps of death: 
Surely no soul is it, sweet as the spasm of erotic emotional exquisite
    error,
  Bathed in the balms of beatified bliss, beatific itself by beatitude’s
    breath. 
Surely no spirit or sense of a soul that was soft to the spirit and soul
    of our senses
  Sweetens the stress of suspiring suspicion that sobs in the semblance
    and sound of a sigh;
Only this oracle opens Olympian, in mystical moods and triangular tenses—­
  “Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn
    of the day when we die.” 
Mild is the mirk and monotonous music of memory, melodiously mute as
    it may be,
  While the hope in the heart of a hero is bruised by the breach of
    men’s rapiers, resigned to the rod;
Made meek as a mother whose bosom-beats bound with the bliss-bringing
    bulk of a balm-breathing baby,
  As they grope through the grave-yard of creeds, under skies growing
    green at a groan for the grimness of God. 
Blank is the book of his bounty beholden of old, and its binding is
    blacker than bluer: 
  Out of blue into black is the scheme of the skies, and their dews
    are the wine of the bloodshed of things;
Till the darkling desire of delight shall be free as a fawn that is
    freed from the fangs that pursue her,
  Till the heart-beats of hell shall be hushed by a hymn from the hunt
    that has harried the kennel of kings.