Pan-Worship, and Other Poems

Chapter 11: FAUST AND MARGARET

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About This Book

A lyrical collection that weaves mythic and folk imagery with intimate pastoral observation. Poems summon classical and rural pagan presences, celebrate springs, woods, and seasonal renewal, and linger over longing for vanished rites. Voices shift between vagrant singers, dreaming peasant figures, and reflective speakers, moving through short songs, narrative ballads, and contemplative lyrics. Recurring motifs include enchanted gardens, musical reverie, and the healing powers of earth and ritual, with tone ranging from playful gaiety to wistful melancholy and a consistent emphasis on vivid sensory detail and musical phrasing.

FAUST AND MARGARET

"Devil," he said, "Love's Heaven—

Shall man not therefor lose his soul?"

* * * * *

"God," she whispered, "is Love Heaven?

Is Heaven a place of dole?"

(And so she gave his Heaven to the man

Because the man did crave it.

And so because she never asked Hell's ban

He gave it.)

"Devil!" he said, "Love's Hell!

Man's wild-beast-thirst, how slake it?

Take the tenderest thing, thus—thus!

Passion-torture it a spell,

And break it!"

* * * * *

"God," she whispered, "Love is Heaven.

Love's not what Love is made for us,

But what we make it."

(And so her dead soul found what it had given,

And what he builded, there his damned soul ended....

And do you think that either Hell or Heaven

These sinners' suffering-on-earth amended?)