They watch me, those informers to the Fates,
Called Fortune, Chance, Necessity, and Death;
Time, in disguise as one who serves and waits,
Eternity, as girls of fragrant breath.
I know them. Men and Boys are in their pay,
And those I hold my trustiest friends may prove
Agents of Theirs to take me if I stray
From fatal ordinance. If I move they move,—

Escape? There is one unwatched way: your eyes,
O Beauty! Keep me good that secret gate!
And when the cordon tightens of the spies
Let the close iris of your eyes grow great.

All hail, sweet poet, more full of more strong fire,
Than hath or shall enkindle any spirit,
I loved what nature gave thee, but this merit
Of wit and art I love not but admire;
Who have before or shall write after thee,
Their works, though toughly laboured, will be
Like infancy or age to man's firm stay,
Or early and late twilights to midday.

Men say, and truly, that they better be
Which be envied than pitied: therefore I,
Because I wish thee best, do thee envy:
O wouldst thou, by like reason, pity me,

i'd think “wonder

if” if
i were a
child “we can see a bat in this
twilight”)
there one is

look

how it goes like a dream

(and between houses,really a kind of
mouse)but he has little wings
and here's my
hotel this is the
door(opening it i

think things

which
were supposed to
be out of my
reach
,they are like
jam on the shelf everybody guessed

was too high)

look
(it's back again there therehere
And)i say “won't you”(remembering)
knowing that you

when citied day with the sonorous homes
of light swiftly sink in the sorrowful hour,
they counted petals O tremendous flower
on whose huge heart prospecting darkness roams

torture my spirit with the exquisite froms
and whithers of existence,
as by shores
soundless, the unspeaking watcher who adores

perceived sails whose mighty brightness dumbs

the utterance of his soul—so even i
wholly chained to a grave astonishment
feel in my being the delirious smart

of thrilled ecstasy, where sea and sky
marry—

conversation with my friend is particularly

to enjoy the composed sudden body atop which always quiv-
ers the electric Distinct face haughtily vital clinched
in a swoon of synopsis

despite a sadistic modesty his mind is seen frequently
fingering the exact beads of a faultless languor when
invisibly consult with some delicious image the a little
strolling lips and eyes inwardly crisping

for my friend, feeling is the sacred and agonizing prox-
imity to its desire of a doomed impetuous acute sentience.

Cleopatra built
like a smooth arrow or
a fleet pillar is eaten
by yesterday

she was a silver tube of wise
lust whose arms and legs
like white squirming pipes
wiggle upon the perfumed roman

strength who now
furiously plays the hot
sweet horrible stops of
her

body
Cleopatra had a
body
it was

thick slim warm moist
built like an organ
and it
loved

he
was a roman theirs was a
music sinuous globular
slippery intense witty huge

and its chords

Dolly sits a-quilting by her mother, stich by stitch,
Gracious, how my pulses throb, how my fingers itch,
While I note her dainty waist and her slender hand,
As she matches this and that, she stitches strand by strand.
And I long to tell her Life's a quilt and I'm a patch;
Love will do the stitching if she'll only be my match.

A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.

The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish . . .
Virgin of boorish births,

Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,

Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,

Move outward into heaven,
Into the alabasters
And night blues.

Foam and cloud are one.
Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.

Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.

There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.

A little dreaming by the way,
A little toiling day by day;
A little pain, a little strife,
A little joy,--and that is life.

A little short-lived summer's morn,
When joy seems all so newly born,
When one day's sky is blue above,
And one bird sings,--and that is love.

A little sickening of the years,
The tribute of a few hot tears
Two folded hands, the failing breath,
And peace at last,--and that is death.

Just dreaming, loving, dying so,
The actors in the drama go--
A flitting picture on a wall,