Poem by Elinor Wylie

Full Moon

My bands of silk and miniver
Momently grew heavier;
The black gauze was beggarly thin;
The ermine muffled mouth and chin;
I could not suck the moonlight in.

Harlequin in lozenges
Of love and hate, I walked in these
Striped and ragged rigmaroles;
Along the pavement my footsoles
Trod warily on living coals.

Shouldering the thoughts I loathed,
In their corrupt disguises clothed,
Morality I could not tear
From my ribs, to leave them bare
Ivory in silver air.

There I walked, and there I raged;
The spiritual savage caged
Within my skeleton, raged afresh
To feel, behind a carnal mesh,
The clean bones crying in the flesh.

1. The Pekingese
2. In Our Content, before the Autumn Came
3. Upon Your Heart, Which Is.the Heart of All
4. Absent Thee from Felicity Awhile
5. The Broken Man

Christopher Morley Full Moon ("The moon is but a silver watch")

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