Classic Poem

EXORCISM

To banish your shape from my mind
I thought of the dangerous wood
Where a man might wander and find,
By a stream in the solitude,
The Queen it is death if one sees,
Death by a merciless dart;
But how could that bring me release,
Shot as I am to the heart?

Beauty will cure me, I cried;
By Beauty is Beauty dislodged.
And I worked on a dream till I eyed
The Queens whom the young man judged.
But the vision faded and slipt;
And the cure was a cure of no worth;
For I said, when the Queens were stript,
I have given the prize to a fourth.

Ugliness, Chaos and War
I know, but I would not invoke;
They would feed you as darkness a star,
And strengthen the beam of my yoke.
If Love be reborn in a song
I with my fate will not quarrel,
But you, if you do him a wrong,
May be changed to a reed or a laurel.