The Stylite

Upon his pillar stands upright The rigid anchoret: his pose, Over the desert, toward the sky, Prolongs the rectitude of stone, The rising and unbroken line. Emmets and men go by beneath. The veering vultures fan his brow: He sees them not: his sanctity Enfolds him like the fuming cloud A thousand thuribles might yield. At evening pass in pompous file The larvae sent by Satanas. To mock him, on a pagan height The ram pant sagittary stands, Stallion of maenads half-equine; And pulsing soft horizons fall And swell with forms the heathen shun— Dark sisters of the Ashtaroth That crawl from undescended gulfs Or slither over sliding scaurs. With kelpy tresses wreathed with foam, Voluptuous cold Nereides Upon the surging desert float; And Cypris, as from out the sea, Rises reborn with veil nor zone. Behind dissolving peristyles Lithe sphinxes crouch and rear in rut; And mincing from Gomorrah's night, Vague-membered gods androgynous Invert an ithyphallic sign. The reeking shames of Sheol glow And writhe before him. . . . Still upright The saint exalts the columned stone With folden arms and changeless eyes— In chastity long ankylosed.