Eyes that wrote songs with a glance, whose look sang the sweetest of stories,

  Sweeter than lips could have told, who loved better only to kiss;

  Sweeter than hands could have written, who took delight in the glories

  Fierce of a triple embrace, a fadeless implacable bliss.

  Love is a sword whose blade is red,

  Love is a deed whose fruit is dead;

  Love is a tiger, fierce of power,

  Easily fades a spring-tide flower.

  Death shall come slow and soft, with the stealthy tread of a leopard;

  While the few stars have grown dim, as he seeks for an innocent prey.

  Death shall pounce soon on the fold, where Love was a treacherous shepherd;

  So with hot lips shall he come, ere the mountains are silver and grey.

  Life shall gasp out in the gloom, and all our desires shall perish;

  Hope and its roseate crown shall fall in the dark to the dust.

  Love and his garland shall go, with the last of the joys we may cherish,

  Death with cold finger shall touch the delicate springs of our lust.

  We shall be weary of kisses, weary of all the caresses

  Man or his sisters of shame dream or devise or obtain;

  Cover the white limbs ashamed with the fiery impassionate tresses,

  Once for a bed to delight, now for a covering to pain.

  Love is a fruit with rotted core,

  Love is a thing shall be no more;

  Love is a bride of a bitter dower,

  Easily fades a spring-tide flower.

  Where shall be Hylas then? for his lonely lips are sighing,

  Vainly in hell for love, vainly for days gone by;

  Where the incarnate flame of Lesbian lovers dying,

  Then where the world is past, and Heaven or hell draw nigh?

  Heaven with cold and loveless lips, though his fruits be many,

  Hell with his red mouth hot, barren although he be.

  Hylas and Sappho choose, and are never denied of any,

  Hell’s most insatiate fangs, death and his empery.

  Heaven is bare and bleak, hell has the joys beyond Heaven,

  Fire and desire and delight, of a love that is always young;

  Hell has the pains of hell, but the sweetest of lusts for leaven.

  Fierce body, breasts of delight, fearful and murderous tongue.

  Hell is the house of all delight,

  Heaven the home of a bitter blight;

  Pain is our joy and our spirits’ power,

  Never shall fade its fiery flower.

  Now is the triumph of Love, gazing far to an infinite pleasure,

  Pleasure that mocks Heaven’s hopes, that our hands are impatient to hold.

  Love and delight pouring out, in a fearless insatiate measure,

  Out of the chalice of lust, scarlet o’errunning its gold.

  This is the song of the Spring,that the nightingales carol by starlight,

  This the delight of our eyes, as they shine with strange fire in the night,

  This is our trust and our joy – beyond death we look on to the far light

  Flaming from hell our last home, this is the key of our might.

  Come, fiery birds of a clime we know not, and sing us your paean;

  Triumph of gods that are known secretly, not by a name,

  Gods whose implacable feet have trampled the god Galilean,

  Cast though they be into hell, given to death and to shame.

  Heaven and hell has striven in war,

  Sappho and Hylas, with Christ and Jah;

  We are of those, though they lose their power,

  Never shall fade their fiery flower.

  TO J. L. D.

  At last, so long desired, so long delayed,

  The step is taken, and the threshold past;

  I am within the palace I have prayed

  At last.

  Like scudding winds, when skies are overcast,

  Came the soft breath of Love, that might not fade.

  O Love, whose magic whispers bind me fast,

  O Love, who hast the kiss of Love betrayed,

  Hide my poor blush beneath thy pinions vast,

  Since thou hast come, nor left me more a maid,

  At last.

  A BALLAD OF PASSIVE PAEDERASTY

  Of man’s delight and man’s desire

  In one thing is no weariness–

  To feel the fury of the fire,

  And writhe within the close caress

  Of fierce embrace, and wanton kiss,

  And final nuptial done aright,

  How sweet a passion, shame, is this,

  A strong man’s love is my delight!

  Free women cast a lustful eye

  On my gigantic charms, and seek

  By word and touch with me to lie,

  And vainly proffer cunt and cheek;

  Then, angry, they miscall me weak,

  Till one, divining me aright,

  Points to her buttocks, whispers ‘Greek!’–

  A strong man’s love is my delight!

  Boys tempt my lips to wanton use,

  And show their tongues, and smile awry,

  And wonder why I should refuse

  To feel their buttocks on the sly,

  And kiss their genitals, and cry:

  ‘Ah! Ganymede, grant me one night!’

  This is the one sweet mystery:

  A strong man’s love is my delight!

  To feel him clamber on me, laid

  Prone on the couch of lust and shame,

  To feel him force me like a maid

  And his great sword within me flame,

  His breath as hot and quick as fame;

  To kiss him and to clasp him tight;

  This is my joy without a name,

  A strong man’s love is my delight.

  To feel again his love grow grand

  Touched by the langour of my kiss;

  To suck the hot blood from my gland

  Mingled with fierce spunk that doth hiss,

  And boils in sudden spurted bliss;

  Ah! God! the long-drawn lusty fight!

  Grant me eternity of this!

  A strong man’s love is my delight!

  ENVOI

  Husband, come early to my bed,

  And stay beyond the dawn of light

  In mighty deeds of lustihead.

  A strong man’s love is my delight!

  TO A. D.

  Across the sea that lies between us twain

  I gaze and see thee, exiled but as free

  As winds that lash the billows of the main

  Across the sea.

  I remain here in somber slavery

  Amid these winter gusts of bitter pain,

  And sorrow for thy lips in vain, in vain,

  Bound by the world’s inexorable chain,

  And parted from thee. Spirit of Liberty,

  Bear thou my kisses’ sunshine, my tears’ rain

  To him I love, who may one day love me,

  And bid him gladden at my amorous strain

  Across the sea.

  AT KIEL

  Oh, the white flame of limbs in dusky air,

  The furnace of thy great grey eyes on me

  Turned till I shudder. Darkness on the sea,

  And wan ghost-lights are flickering everywhere

  So that the world is ghastly. But within

  Where we two cling together, and hot kisses

  Stray to and fro amid the wildernesses

  Of swart curled locks! I deem it a sweet sin,

  So sweet that fires of hell have no more power

  On body and soul to quench the lustrous flame

  Of that desire that burns between us twain.

  What is Eternity, seeing we hold this hour

  For all the lusts and luxuries of shame?

  Heaven is well lost for this surpassing gain.

  SUGGESTED ADDITIONAL STANZAS FOR ‘A BALLAD OF BURDENS’

  The burden of caught clap. How sore it is!

  A burden of sad shameful suffering,

  The bitter bastard of a bloody kiss,

  The Parthian arrow poisoned from Love’s sling!

  Lo, sweet Lord Christ, thou knowest how sore a thing

  Is a cock crooked and consumed of fire

  Shooting out venomous sap that hath a sting!

  This is the end of every man’s desire.

  The burden of bought boys. Behold, dear Lord,

  How plump their buttocks be, lift up Thine eyes,

  See how their cocks stand at an amorous word,

  How their lips suck out life until love dies,

  See, Lord, Thou knowest, how wearily one lies

  Cursing the lusts that fail, the deeds that tire;

  Shrunk is San Cresce to a sorry size.

  This is the end of every man’s desire.

  ‘GO INTO THE HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES, AND COMPEL THEM TO COME IN’

  Let my fond lips but drink thy golden wine,

  My bright-eyed Arab, only let me eat

  The rich brown globes of sacramental meat

  Steaming and firm, hot from their home divine,

  And let me linger with thy hands in mine,

  And lick the sweat from dainty dirty feet

  Fresh with the losse aroma of the street,

  And then anon I’ll glue my mouth to thine.

  This is the height of joy, to lie and feel

  Thy spiced spittle trickle down my throat;

  This is more pleasant than at dawn to steal

  Toward lawns and sunny brooklets, and to gloat

  Over earth’s peace, and hear in ether float

  Songs of soft spirits into rapture peal.

  THE BLOOD-LOTUS

  The ashen sky, too sick for sleep, makes my face grey; my senses swoon;

  Here, in the glamour of the moon, will not some pitying godhead weep

  For cold grey anguish of her eyes, that look to God, and look in vain,

  For death, the anodyne of pain, for sleep, earth’s trivial paradise?

  Sleep I forget. Her silky breath no longer fans my ears; I dream

  I float on some forgotten stream that hath a saviour still of death,

  A sweet warm smell of hidden flowers whose heavy petals kiss the sun,

  Fierce tropic poisons every one that fume and sweat through forest hours;

  They grow in darkness, heat beguiles their sluggish kisses, in the wood

  They breathe no murmur that is good, and Satan in their blossom smiles.

  They murder with the old perfume that maddens all men’s blood; we die

  Fresh from some corpse-clothed memory, some secret redolence of gloom,

  Some darkling murmurous song of lust quite strange to man and beast and bird,

  Silent in power, not overheard by any snake that eats the dust:

  No crimson-hooded viper knows, no silver-crested asp has guessed

  The strange soft secrets of my breast; no leprous cobra shall disclose

  The many-seated, multiform, divine, essential joys that these

  Dank odours bring, that starry seas wash white in vain; intense and warm

  The scents fulfil, they permeate all lips, all arteries, and fire

  New murmured music on the lyre that throbs the horrors they create.

  Omniscient blossom! Is thy red slack bosom fresher for my kiss?

  Are thy loves sharper? Hast thou bliss in all the sorrows of the dead?

  Why art thou paler when the moon grows loftier in the troublous sky?

  Why dost thou beat and heave when I press lips of fire, hell’s princeliest boon,

  To thy mad petals, green and gold like angels’ wings, when as a flood

  God’s essence fills them, and the blood throughout their web grows icy cold?

  To thy red centre are my eyes held fast and fervent, as at night

  Some sad miasma lends a light of strange and silent blasphemies

  To lure a soul to hell, to draw some saint’s charred lust, to tempt, to win

  Another sacrifice to sin, another poet’s heart to gnaw

  With dubious remorse. Oh! flame of torturing flower-love! sacrament

  Of Satan, triple element of mystery and love and shame,

  Green, gold, and crimson, in my heart you strive with Jesus for its realm,

  While Sorrow’s tears would overwhelm the warriors of either part!

  Jesus would lure me: from his side the gleaming torrent of the spear

  Withdraws, my soul with joy and fear waits for sweet blood to pour its tide

  Of warm delight–in vain! so cold, so watery, so slack it flows,

  It leaves me moveless as a rose, albeit her flakes are manifold.

  He hath no scent to drive men mad; no mystic fragrance from his skin

  Sheds a loose hint of subtle sin such as the queen Faustina had.

  Thou drawest me. Thy golden lips are carven Cleopatra-wise

  Large, full, and moist, within them lies the silver rampart, whence there slips

  That rosy flame of love, the fount of blood at my light bidding spilt;

  And my desires, if aught thou wilt, are with thy mind, and thy account

  With God shall bear my name the more; give me the knowledge, me the power

  For some new sin one little hour, and bankrupt God the creditor:

  Steal from his stock of suffering; his tender mercies rob at will;

  Destroy his graciousness, until he must avenge the name of king.

  Strange fascinations whirl and wind about my spirit lying coils;

  Thy charm enticeth, for the spoils of victory, all an evil mind.

  Thy perfume doth confound my thought, new longings echo, and I crave

  Doubtful liaisons with the grave and loves of Parthia for sport,

  I think perhaps no longer yet, but dream and lust for stranger things

  Than ever sucked the lips of kings, or fed the tears of Mahomet.

  Quaint carven vampire bats, unseen in curious hollows of the trees,

  Or deadlier serpents coiled at eased round carcases of birds unclean.

  All wandering changeful spectre shapes that dance in slow sweet measure round

  And merge themselves in the profound, nude women and distorted apes

  Grotesque and hairy, in their rage more rampant than the stallion steed;

  There is no help; their horrid need on these pale women they assuage.

  Wan breasts too pendulous, thin hands waving so aimlessly, they breathe

  Faint sickly kisses, and inweave my head in quite burial-bands.

  The silent troops recede; within the fiery circle of their glance

  Warm writhing woman-horses dance a shameless Bacchanal of sin;

  Foam whips their reeking lips, and still the flower-witch nestless to my lips,

  Twines her swart lissome legs and hips, half serpent and half devil, till

  My whole life seems to lie in her; her kisses draw my breath; my face

  Loses its lustre in the grace of her quick bosom; sinister

  The raving spectres reel; I see beyond my Circe’s eyes no shape

  Save vague cloud-measures that escape the dances whirling witchery.

  Their song is in my ears, that burn with their melodious wickedness;

  But in her heart my sorceress has songs more sinful, that I learn

  As she sings slowly all their shame, and makes me tingle with delight

  At new debaucheries, whose might rekindles blood and bone to flame.

  The circle gathers. Negresses howl in the naked dance, and wheel

  On poniard-blades of poisoned steel, and weep out blood in agonies;

  Strange beast and reptile writhe; the song grows high and melancholy now;

  The perfume savours every brow with lust unutterable of wrong;

  Clothed with my flower-bride I sit, a harlot in a harlot’s dress,

  And laugh with careless wickedness that strews the broad road of the Pit

  With vine and myrtle and thy flower, my harlot-maiden, who for man

  Now first forsakest thy leman, thy Eve, my Lilith, in this bower

  Which we indwell, a deathless three, changeless and changing, as the pyre

  Of earthly love becomes a fire to heat us through eternity.

  I have forgotten Christ at last; he may look back, grown amorous,