Works

If I have given myself to you and you,
And if these pale hands are not virginal,
Nor these bright lips beneath your own lips true,
What matters it? I do not stand nor fall...

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone or shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.
...

The mind is Beauty's thief, the poet takes
The golden spendthrift's trail among the blooms
Where she stands tossing silver in the lakes,
And twisting bright swift threads on airy looms....

I raised the veil, I loosed the bands,
I took the dead thing from its place.
Like a warm stream in frozen lands
My lips went wandering on her face,
My hands burnt in her hands.
...

The low bay melts into a ring of silver,
And slips it on the shore's reluctant finger,
Though in an hour the tide will turn, will tremble,
Forsaking her because the moon persuades him....

Between two common days this day was hung
When Love went to the ending that was his;
His seamless robe was rent, his brow was wrung,
He took at last the sponge's bitter kiss.
...

Is it not a wonderful thing to be able to force an astonished plant to bear rare flowers which are foreign to it ... and to obtain a marvellous result from sap which, left to itself, would have produced corollas without beauty?...

Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles! -
Usumcasane and Theridamas,
Is it not passing brave to be a king,
And ride in triumph through Persepolis? - MARLOWE.

...