Dearly I love a friend; yet a foe I may turn to my profit;
Friends show me that which I can; foes teach me that which I should.

The high-handed man, solicitous
Untamed your demons; what passion
Seethed within you to be kissed again,
To be insulted, and restored,
Adored.

But now – your maidenhead intact –
You have only dreams, and no decipherer;
Only dreams to tell what might have been;
What young man, waiting across the seas
Would sail to claim your hand.

How I shall weep for you, gone as you are
Into a lonely death, like millions,
Without love, without love, without love.

When you called me
To light up your life
I could never refuse.
But, there are things I ask of you.

Love, I can’t be a candle
For I know it is an ancient lie.
The candle is for the solemn,
And for those who yearn a slow
And settled tenderness. Not for us.
It is for those who can bear to leave
A mass of their waste, the dregs of their glory.
O, it is for the selfish who seek to burn through a medium.

Love, I will promise you a substitute.
I could be that piece of holy camphor
So safely locked away from prying hands.

(Translated from the French by Edouard Rodti)

My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone

By all means they try to hold me secure who love me in this world.
But it is otherwise with thy love which is greater than theirs,
and thou keepest me free.

Lest I forget them they never venture to leave me alone.
But day passes by after day and thou art not seen.

If I call not thee in my prayers, if I keep not thee in my heart,
thy love for me still waits for my love.

Did I believe the angels soon would call
You, my beloved, to the other shore,
And I should never see you any more,
I love you so I know that I should fall
Into dejection utterly, and all
Love's pretty pageantry, wherein we bore
Twin banners bravely in the tumult's fore,
Would seem as shadows idling on a wall.
So daintily I love you that my love
Endures no rumor of the winter's breath,
And only blossoms for it thinks the sky
Forever gracious, and the stars above
Forever friendly. Even the fear of death

And what is love? It is a doll dress'd up
For idleness to cosset, nurse, and dandle;
A thing of soft misnomers, so divine
That silly youth doth think to make itself
Divine by loving, nad so goes on
Yawning and doting a whole summer long,
Till Miss's comb is made a perfect tiara,
And common Wellingtons turn Romeo boots;
Then Cleopatra lives at number seven,
And Antony resides in Brunswick Square.
Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world,
If Queens and Soldiers have play'd deep for hearts,

And who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day--
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.

Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
When once from our possession they must pass;
But love, though misdirected, is among
The things which are immortal, and surpass
All that frail stuff which will be--or which was.

Many a mile over land and sea
Unsummoned my love returned to me;
I remember not the words he said
But only the trees moaning overhead.

And he came ready to take and bear
The cross I had carried for many a year,
But words came slowly one by one
From frozen lips shut still and dumb.

How sounded my words so still and slow
To the great strong heart that loved me so,
Who came to save me from pain and wrong
And to comfort me with his love so strong?

I felt the wind strike chill and cold