Here in the dusk your lips against my face
Cling close and sigh—you tremble in my arms,
Make glad my heart with indescribable charms,
And all my manhood hungers for your grace.
Yet I recall how friendship's light embrace
Awoke in me the soul divine that sings;
The lyre that when Apollo touched the strings
Found voice, but faintly Venus' hand obeys.

What time I trod the path Catullus went,
Where Shakespeare paced, before but still in view,
My every heart-beat was a burst of song:
But now a woman's tresses redolent
Entwine about my fingers, and a new
Strange dumbness does my sacred calling wrong!