AVERTISSEMENT.
Her name begins as Love begins,
Mine as "November", " Nevermore ".
No thousand nights and one between these covers.
No miniatures, enluminures or dyes —
For art is but a prostitute that hovers
To court outsiders — you alone may prize
These pages which your idle hand unties ? —
. . . Leaving art to artists — we, loves lovers,
Keep for out-worn Beauty a disguise.
— (A line traced round a shadow as it dies,
Some semblance of the scattered rose recovers ?) —
So making everything seem otherwise :
Associations are our deities !
— And ivy leaves, transparent eggs of plovers
Are fragments of the feast they symbolize. —
Here, visible as sleeping Eros, lies
A book of dreams and broken memories,
A living past for which blind Love has eyes ?
— 20 —
