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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Alchemy

Florence Kilpatrick Mixter

THEY had no souls, the envious ones!

They were blind to your heart’s beauty,

Deaf to your spirit’s voice,

And dumb in the presence of your holiness.

But they felt a vague warmth

In their cold hands

As you passed.

And so they reached out

For your flaming soul;

Throwing it on their own dead altar-fires,

Warming their numb fingers in the golden flame

That rose to Heaven,

Flickered,

And went out.

Somewhere, among the scattered ashes,

Lies the matrix-stone

Of your imperishable beauty.