Where Pyramids and temple-wrecks are piled
Confusedly on camel-coloured sands,
And the mute Arab motionlessly stands,
Like some swart god who never wept or smiled,--
I picked up mummy relics of the wild
(And sea-shells once with clutching baby hands),
And felt a wafture from old Motherlands,
And all the morning wonder of a Child

To find Sphinx-money. So the Beduin calls
Small fossils of the waste. Nay, poet's gold;
'Twill give thee entrance to those rites of old,
When hundred-gated Thebes, with storied walls,

The Spanish women don't wear slacks
Because their hips are too enormous.
'Tis true each bulbous bosom lacks
No inspiration that should warm us;
But how our ardor seems to freeze
When we behold their bulgy knees!

Their starry eyes and dusky hair,
Their dazzling teeth in smile so gracious,
I love, but oh I wish they were
Not so confoundedly curvacious.
I'm sure I would prefer them willowy,
Instead of obviously pillowy.

It may be that they're plump because
The caballeros like them that way;

The mirthful gods who ruled o'er Greater Greece
Created this fair land in some high mood
Of frolic joy; the smiling heavens brood
Over a scene soft-whelmed in jocund peace.
Gay clamors, odorous breathings never cease
From basking crag, lime grove, and olive wood;
Swart fishers sing from out the sparkling flood
Where once the syrens sang in luring ease.
The curved beach swarms with brown-skinned boys and girls
Dancing the tarantella on the sands,
Their limbs dive with music's jollity;
And ever, where the warm wave leaps and swirls

Soon, O Ianthe! life is o'er,
And sooner beauty's heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.

IF thou must love me, let it be for naught
   Except for love's sake only. Do not say,
   'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
   A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
   For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
   Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
Into the shade and loneliness and mire
Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

One day, I think, I’ll feel a cool wind blowing,
See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,

And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam—

Languid, and sad, and slow, from day to day
I journey on, yet pensive turn to view
(Where the rich landscape gleams with softer hue)
The streams and vales, and hills, that steal away.
So fares it with the children of the earth:
For when life's goodly prospect opens round,
Their spirits beat to tread that fairy ground,
Where every vale sounds to the pipe of mirth.
But them vain hope and easy youth beguiles,
And soon a longing look, like me, they cast
Back on the pleasing prospect of the past:
Yet Fancy points where still far onward smiles

O Time! who know'st a lenient hand to lay
Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)
The faint pang stealest unperceived away;
On thee I rest my only hope at last,
And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear
That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,
I may look back on every sorrow past,
And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile—
As some lone bird, at day's departing hour,
Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower
Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:—

When, in the gloomy mansion of the dead,
This with'ring heart, this faded form shall sleep;
When these fond eyes, at length shall cease to weep,
And earth's cold lap receive this fev'rish head;
Envy shall turn away, a tear to shed,
And Time's obliterating pinions sweep
The spot, where poets shall their vigils keep,
To mourn and wander near my freezing bed!
Then, my pale ghost, upon th' Elysian shore,
Shall smile, releas'd from ev'ry mortal care;
Whil, doom'd love's victim to repine no more,
My breast shall bathe in endless rapture there!