About Soho we went before the light;
We went, unresting six, craving new fun,
New scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night
Of rollicking laughter, drink and song, was done.
The vault was void, but for the dawn's great star
That shed upon our path its silver flame,
When La Paloma on a low guitar
Abruptly from a darkened casement came--
Harlem! All else shut out, I saw the hall,
And you in your red shoulder sash come dancing
With Val against me languid by the wall,
Your burning coffee-colored eyes keen glancing

A much-discerning Public hold
The Singer generally sings
And prints and sells his past for gold.

Whatever I may here disclaim,
The very clever folk I sing to
Will most indubitably cling to
Their pet delusion, just the same.


I had seen, as the dawn was breaking
And I staggered to my rest,
Tari Devi softly shaking
From the Cart Road to the crest.
I had seen the spurs of Jakko
Heave and quiver, swell and sink.
Was it Earthquake or tobacco,
Day of Doom, or Night of Drink?

Oft when sweet music undulated round,
Like the full moon out of a perfumed sea
Thine image from the waves of blissful sound
Rose and thy sudden light illumined me.


And in the country, leaf and flower and air
Would alter and the eternal shape emerge;
Because they spoke of thee the fields seemed fair,
And Joy to wait at the horizon's verge.


The little cloud-gaps in the east that filled
Gray afternoons with bits of tenderest blue
Were windows in a palace pearly-silled

Your hair was full of roses in the dewfall as we danced,
The sorceress enchanting and the paladin entranced,
In the starlight as we wove us in a web of silk and steel
Immemorial as the marble in the halls of Boabdil,
In the pleasuance of the roses with the fountains and the yews
Where the snowy Sierra soothed us with the breezes and the dews!
In the starlight as we trembled from a laugh to a caress,
And the God came warm upon us in our pagan allegresse.
Was the Baile de la Bona too seductive? Did you feel

L'anno che Gesucristo impastò er monno,
Ché pe impastallo già c'era la pasta,
Verde lo vorze fà, grosso e ritonno,
All'uso d'un cocommero de tasta.

Fece un zole, una luna e un mappamonno,
Ma de le stelle poi dì una catasta:
Su ucelli, bestie immezzo, e pesci in fonno:
Piantò le piante, e doppo disse: "Abbasta".

Me scordavo de dì che creò l'omo,
E coll'omo la donna, Adamo e Eva;
E je proibbì de nun toccaje un pomo.

Ma appena che a maggnà l'ebbe viduti,
Strillò per dio con quanta voce aveva:

Krishna awake, for the day has dawned:
large, deep and lotus-like,
your eyes are as in the love-shaped lake
a pair of swans even a million Kamadevas cannot vie
with the bewitching beauty of your face;
the sun rises in the east,
a crimson ball the night is going
and the moonlight pales
the lamps turn dim
and the stars fade out
as though the bright radiance of wisdom's rays
dispels the pleasures that the senses tire,
and the light of hope chases away
the murky darkness of despair and doubt.

Listen, the birds sing

Know, Celia, since thou art so proud,
'Twas I that gave thee thy renown.
Thou hadst in the forgotten crowd
Of common beauties lived unknown
Had not my verse extolled thy name,
And with it imped the wings of Fame.

That killing power is none of thine;
I gave it to thy voice and eyes.
Thy sweets, thy graces, all are mine;
Thou art my star, shin'st in my skies:
Then dart not from thy borrowed sphere
Lightning on him that fixed thee there.

Tempt me with such affrights no more,
Lest what I made I uncreate.

Knoledge, acquayntance, resort, fauour with grace;
Delyte, desyre, respyte wyth lyberte;
Corage wyth lust, conuenient tyme and space;
Dysdayns, dystres, exylyd cruelte;
Wordys well set with good habylyte;
Demure demenaunce, womanly of porte;
Transendyng plesure, surmountyng all dysporte;

Allectuary arrectyd to redres
These feuerous axys, the dedely wo and payne
Of thoughtfull hertys plungyd in dystres;
Refresshyng myndys the Aprell shoure of rayne;
Condute of comforte, and well most souerayne;

Ask the sun; it has watched him pass-
a shadow mirrored on seas of glass;
ask the stars that he knew so well
if they beheld where a bird-man fell.
Ask the wind that has blown with him
over the edge of the oceans' rim,
far from the charted haunts of men,
to the utmost limits and back again.
Ask the clouds on the mountain height
the echoes that followed him in his flight,
the thunder that prowls the midnight sky,
if a silvered 'plane went riding by.

If the birds could talk, would they tell the fall

Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?
Creep thou between -- thy coming's all unnoised.
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.