Works

"I thought you loved me." "No, it was only fun."
"When we stood there, closer than all?" "Well, the harvest moon
"Was shining and queer in your hair, and it turned my head."...

Unaware of its terror,
And but half aware
Of the world's beauty near her -
Of sunlight on the stones,
And trembling birds in the square,
Lightly went Madala -
A rose blown suddenly...

"What did she leave?" ...
Only these hungry miser-words, poor heart!
Not "Did she love?" "Did she suffer?" "Was she sad
From this green, bright and tossing world to part?"...

Give me no coil of d'mon flowers -
Pale Messalines that faint and brood
Through the spent secret twilight hours
On their strange feasts of blood.

Give me wild things of moss and peat -...

The evening found us whom the day had fled,
Once more in bitter anger, you and I,
Over some small, some foolish, trivial thing
Our anger would not decently let die....

You give no portent of impermanence
Though before sun goes you are long gone hence,
Your bright, inherited crown
Withered and fallen down.

It seems that your blue immobility...

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.
...