cycle

The Devil stirs about me without rest,
and round me floats like noxious air and thin;
I breathe this poison-air which scalds my breast,
and fills me with desires of monstrous sin.

Knowing my love of Art, he sometimes takes
the shape of supple girls supremely fair;
and with a wily, canting lie he makes
my heated lips his shameful potions share.

Then far he leads me from the sight of God,
Crushed with fatigue, to where no man has trod-
To the vague, barren plains where silence sounds,
and hurls into my face his foul construction
of slimy clothes, and gaping, putrid wounds,
and all the bleeding harness of destruction!