Poems (Tree)/You Preach to Me of Laws, You Tie My Limbs

by Iris Tree

ROCKETS AND ASHES

YOU preach to me of laws, you tie my limbs With rights and wrongs and arguments of good,You choke my songs and fill my mouth with hymns, You stop my heart and turn it into wood.

I serve not God, but make my idol fair From clay of brown earth, painted bright with blood,Dressed in sweet flesh and wonder of wild hair By Beauty's fingers to her changing mood.

The long line of the sea, the straight horizon, The toss of flowers, the prance of milky feet,And moonlight clear as glass my great religion, And sunrise falling on the quiet street.

The coloured crowd, the unrestrained, the gay, And lovers in the secret sheets of nightTrembling like instruments of music, till the day Stands marvelling at their sleeping bodies white.

Age creeps upon your timid little faces Beneath each black umbrella sly and slow,Proud in the unimportance of your places You sit in twilight prophesying woe.

So dim and false and grey, take my compassion, I from my pageant golden as the dayPity your littleness from all my passion, Leave you my sins to weep and whine away!

1914