Love, they say, is a pain

Infinite as the soul,

Ever a longing to be

Love's, to infinity,

Ever a longing in vain

After a vanishing goal.

I know the woman has no soul, I know

The woman has no possibilities

Of soul or mind or heart, but merely is

The masterpiece of flesh: well, be it so.

It is her flesh that I adore; I go

Thirsting afresh to drain her empty kiss.

I know she cannot love: it is not this

My vanquished heart implores in overthrow.

Tyrannously I crave, I crave alone,

Her splendid body, Earth's most eloquent

Music, divinest human harmony;

Her body now a silent instrument,

That 'neath my touch shall wake and make for me

The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.

And I too under the stars,

Alone with the night again,

And the water's monotone;

I and the night alone,

And the world and the ways of men

Farther from me than the stars.

Night, a more perfect day.

Life dreams itself, contents to keep

Happy immortality, in sleep.

To have loved, to have been made happy thus,

What better fate has life in store for us?

The desert of virginity

Aches in the hotness of her mouth.

O, the one happiness, when, out of breath,

Our feet slip, and we stumble upon death!

God, like all highest things,

Hides light in shade,

And in the night his visitings

To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.

Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears,

A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises,

The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.

The dead are happy, having no desire.

I rise and fall, and rise and fall again,

Something is in me, famishing for bread,

Baffled and unappeasable as fire.

Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire

Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.