Mauberley

I Turned from the 'eau-forte Par Jaquemart' To the strait head Of Messalina: 'His true Penelope Was Flaubert,' And his tool The engraver's. Firmness, Not the full smile, His art, but an art In profile; Colourless Pier Francesca, Pisanello lacking the skill To forge Achaia. II For three years, diabolus in the scale, He drank ambrosia, All passes, ANANGKE prevails, Came end, at last, to that Arcadia. He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, Amid her galaxies, NUKTIS 'AGALMA Drifted . . . drifted precipitate, Asking time to be rid of ... Of his bewilderment; to designate His new found orchid. . . . To be certain . . . certain . . . (Amid aerial flowers) . . . time for arrangements- Drifted on To the final estrangement; Unable in the supervening blankness To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff Until he found his sieve . . . Ultimately, his seismograph: Given that is his 'fundamental passion', This urge to convey the relation Of eye-lid and cheek-bone By verbal manifestations; To present the series Of curious heads in medallion He had passed, inconscient, full gaze, The wide-branded irides And botticellian sprays implied In their diastasis; Which ansethesis, noted a year late, And weighed, revealed his great affect, (Orchid), mandate Of Eros, a retrospect. Mouths biting empty air, The still stone dogs, Caught in metamorphosis, were Left him as epilogues.