Classic Poem

Where life flows hottest
There I wade in the warm tide,
Feeding;
And I shall not vanish utterly,
I shall not yield and be dispersed in the mists of unconsciousness
While I feed on blood,
While I dip myself into the fluid of man's being.

I did so love my body
And the wide noon!
I was clad in a garment that was lovely,
In a form that stood solid;
I was a shape that made a shadow
And my flesh glowed in the sunlight …

But now I do not love the winds
That weave their patterns on the loom of space,
For I am less than they
I drift, I am less than starlight
If I cannot clutch your heart
And drink from it …

I waver, I am less than blown cloud
If I cannot lay myself against your brain
And throb with its rhythms …

Ah, let me mingle with the human heat of you that still have form!
Let me sting again with the sharp brine of life
And go swooning down in the sea, sink drowning in the deep sea of love.

Give to me but only a little, only a little of your life! …
I shall scarcely blur your lamplight.
You shall scarcely know me from the smoke curling on your hearth …

When I coil among your nerves,
When I float through your veins,
You shall be shaken, you shall feel my presence
For a moment only …

When I lie in the fat marrow of your passions
Sucking up their power
You shall feel me strange and alien there
For an instant, but an instant only …

Give me your feasts;
Give me your fellowship
And the good smell of spilled wine,
I shall scarcely cloud the glasses …

Let me glide along the gleaming beauty of your hair,
You shall feel it lifted, you shall feel it stirred and moving for a moment …

Give me your laughter,
To play through it as shadows tumble down a waterfall;
And you shall feel me in your laughter
Only as a little ache,
An ache of causeless pathos at the core of mirth …

Give me your eyes,
Let me thread your vision,
And you shall know it only by a sudden fleeting wonder
Passing over the face of familiar things …
Let me, for a little while,
Have but a fold of your many-coloured cloak of life!

For I have loved this earth,
Its rocks and its grasses and its flesh …
I have stood solid on its solid hills, a silhouette against the dawn,
I have made a black shadow at noon,
And I have held wonderful women in mine arms under the passionate stars—
And still I thirst, I thirst, I thirst for life!
And for a little while
Before I am lost among the mists,
For yet a little while,
I shall have my moments of being,
Drinking of your blood!