You stand at the point of a sacrilege,

Then step across, and let the dark thought come:

These storms of love that drove him mad, with joy,

With torment, and raised the mist that bound him,

To a timeless world, a fine dissolving,

Were the motive force not of his verse

But of his prose. The poems were personal,

And at their truest, impenetrable

To all but the two in that magic fire;

What the broad world needed was the dry craft

Of his other calling: the exhumation

Of the dead, restoring breath and blood

To Time's forgotten. And so the gods,

Or the Goddess, or history, or fate,

Or evolution's critical mass,

Or what other name we give the great fact

Of Eternity, sent him these hectics,

As fuel, diversion and reward, to draw

The daily poisons from his veins, and save him For the labour of resurrection.