Chapter XXI: Soul and Body

It may be all my pain is woven wrong, And this wild "I" is nothing but a dream The body exhales, as roses at evensong Their passionate odour. Verily it may seem That this most fevered and fantastic wear Of nerves and senses is myself indeed, The rest, illusion taken in that snare.-- But still the fiery splendour and the need Can bite like actual flame and hunger. Ah! If Sense, bewildered in the spiral towers Of Matter, dreamed this great Superbia I call the Soul, not less the Dream hath powers; Not less these Twain, being one, are separate, Like lovers whose love is tangled hard with hate.