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First they had lifted him,
Tired with the falling of sky,
To where the earth
Unmentioned in his dreams
Moved stars at him, flowering
Beneath the Winter's crust.
And he, seeing the while ;
The image motionless pressed
On his clay-sight, seems
To be carved from rivers, - but sound
Of the nails had flowed
The liquid flesh in pattern,
And had turned to man, backed by
The breakwater of his
Dying wood: then
To his mouth, soured by the
Acid kiss, they lifted petals
Uncorrupted through dead Autumn
And touched their murmur
To his tongue, while he
The ' Wherefore ' still on his lips,
Grooved his dead spirit to
Their core, and sprung their
Summer-tint upon his blood.
But others had smoothed clear
His wounds, and remedied with magic
Art his hands impaled
For wonders ; and soon they lay
Unmarked, as though the barbs
Had been of nettle-fabric, and
Had faded from the painted part
And pointed then no longer
To the strangers of his death
And sharers of his mortal day : and so
They helped him anoint with fingers
Shuddering with thought of how the Sun
Was sifted through them, -
They touched his head and through
Its maze, confused, plucked thorns
Now gilded in his agony
Till at his side a golden mountain lay
And lifted quietly his crown from him.
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