Eros Tyrannos

She fears him, and will always ask

what fated her to choose him

She meets in his engaging mask

all reason to refuse him

But what she meets and what she fears

Are less than are the downward years

Drawn swiftly to the foamless weirs

of age, were she to lose him

Between a blurred sagacity

that once had power to sound him

And love, that will not let him be

the Judas that she found him

Her pride assuages her almost

As if it were alone the cost

He sees that he will not be lost

and waits, and looks around him

A sense of ocean and old trees

envelopes and allures him

Tradition, touching all he sees

beguiles and reassures him

And what she sees in what he says

Is dimmed with what she knows of days

Till even prejudice delays

and fades, and she secures him

The falling leaf inaugurates

the reign of her confusion

The pounding wave reverberates

the dirge of her illusion

And home, where passion lived and died

Becomes a place where she can hide

While all the town and harborside

vibrate with her seclusion

We tell you, tapping on our brows

the story as it should be

As if the story of a house

were told, or ever could be

We'll have no kindly veil between

Her visions and those we have seen

As if we knew what hers have been,

or what they are, or would be

Meanwhile, we do no harm, for they

that with a god have striven

Not hearing much of what we say

take what the god has given

Though like waves breaking it may be

Or like a changed familiar tree

Or like a stairway to the sea

where down the blind are driven

This might be the best-written poem in the English language. - Howard