A Mood

By George Sterling

I am grown weary of permitted things
    And weary of the care-emburdened age—
    Of any dusty lore of priest and sage
To which no memory of Arcadia clings;
For subtly in my blood at evening sings
    A madness of the faun—a choric rage
    That makes all earth and sky seem but a cage
In which the spirit pines with cheated wings.

Rather by dusk for Lilith would I wait
    And for a moment's rapture welcome death,
Knowing that I had baffled Time and Fate,
        And feeling on my lips, that died with day
    As sense and soul were gathered to a breath,
        The immortal, deadly lips that kissing slay.
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