RODIN

VI

PAOLO AND FRANCESCA

Published in the Weekly Critical Review

Paris, France

25 June 1903

(page 16)

Paolo ignites, Francesca is consumed.

Loosened she lies, and breathes great gasps of love;

He, like a hunter, hungers, leaps above,

Attains, exults, despairs. This love is doomed,

Were there no hell. In granite walls entombed

Lies the true spirit and the soul thereof.

The body is here—yet is it not enough,

These litanies unchanted, unperfumed?

Live in the shuddering marble they remain:

Here is the infinite credo of pure pain.

Here let life’s agony take hold enough

Of all that lives; let partial tears for them

Wake knowledge, brain-dissolving diadem

Of white-hot woe upon the brows of love!