Do you dream in cerements of paler shades
Than those your vestal parents wore?
On eft-mound wheeling, pain abeyed,
    The lights of stars a prolix call;

Fair lady, do you dally with expiation or passion?
    Has your hour come and gone?
Have you seen the numinous in your soul?

Do you dream of arid expanses,
Like the aggrievement of a gull
    Denied the plashing of the sea?

A trade, mayhap; passion for prison,
    A prodigious self-denial;
Commitment become an abjuration,
    And hope become a beggary rein.

Your human half should not restrain the best;
Ah, that iteration could make a bawd,
    Like lurid epithets,
A song suffused with soul.