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 --
 Most individual and bewildering ghost! --

And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

Sonnet:  "I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true"

I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.
 Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.
On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --
 The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.
Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.
 Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.
But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,
 Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tell
Whether they love at all, or, loving, whom:
 An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,
Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;
 For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.
Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain.  They doubt, and sigh,
 And do not love at all.  Of these am I.

Success

I think if you had loved me when I wanted;
 If I'd looked up one day, and seen your eyes,
And found my wild sick blasphemous prayer granted,
 And your brown face, that's full of pity and wise,
Flushed suddenly; the white godhead in new fear
 Intolerably so struggling, and so shamed;
Most holy and far, if you'd come all too near,
 If earth had seen Earth's lordliest wild limbs tamed,
Shaken, and trapped, and shivering, for MY touch --
 Myself should I have slain? or that foul you?
But this the strange gods, who had given so much,
 To have seen and known you, this they might not do.
One last shame's spared me, one black word's unspoken;
 And I'm alone; and you have not awoken.

Dust

When the white flame in us is gone,
 And we that lost the world's delight
Stiffen in darkness, left alone
 To crumble in our separate night;

When your swift hair is quiet in death,
 And through the lips corruption thrust
Has stilled the labour of my breath --
 When we are dust, when we are dust! --

Not dead, not undesirous yet,
 Still sentient, still unsatisfied,
We'll ride the air, and shine, and flit,
 Around the places where we died,

And dance as dust before the sun,
 And light of foot, and unconfined,
Hurry from road to road, and run
 About the errands of the wind.

And every mote, on earth or air,
 Will speed and gleam, down later days,
And like a secret pilgrim fare
 By eager and invisible ways,

Nor ever rest, nor ever lie,
 Till, beyond thinking, out of view,
One mote of all the dust that's I
 Shall meet one atom that was you.

Then in some garden hushed from wind,
 Warm in a sunset's afterglow,
The lovers in the flowers will find
 A sweet and strange unquiet grow

Upon the peace; and, past desiring,
 So high a beauty in the air,
And such a light, and such a quiring,
 And such a radiant ecstasy there,

They'll know not if it's fire, or dew,
 Or out of earth, or in the height,
Singing, or flame, or scent, or hue,
 Or two that pass, in light, to light,

Out of the garden, higher, higher. . . .
 But in that instant they shall learn
The shattering ecstasy of our fire,
 And the weak passionless hearts will burn

And faint in that amazing glow,
 Until the darkness close above;
And they will know -- poor fools, they'll know! --
 One moment, what it is to love.

Kindliness

When love has changed to kindliness --
Oh, love, our hungry lips, that press
So tight that Time's an old god's dream
Nodding in heaven, and whisper stuff
Seven million years were not enough
To think on after, make it seem
Less than the breath of children playing,
A blasphemy scarce worth the saying,
A sorry jest, "When love has grown
To kindliness -- to kindliness!" . . .
And yet -- the best that either's known
Will change, and wither, and be less,
At last, than comfort, or its own
Remembrance.  And when some caress
Tendered in habit (once a flame
All heaven sang out to) wakes the shame
Unworded, in the steady eyes
We'll have, -- THAT day, what shall we do?
Being so noble, kill the two
Who've reached their second-best?  Being wise,
Break cleanly off, and get away.
Follow down other windier skies
New lures, alone?  Or shall we stay,
Since this is all we've known, content
In the lean twilight of such day,
And not remember, not lament?
That time when all is over, and
Hand never flinches, brushing hand;
And blood lies quiet, for all you're near;
And it's but spoken words we hear,
Where trumpets sang; when the mere skies
Are stranger and nobler than your eyes;
And flesh is flesh, was flame before;
And infinite hungers leap no more
In the chance swaying of your dress;
And love has changed to kindliness.

Mummia

As those of old drank mummia
 To fire their limbs of lead,
Making dead kings from Africa
 Stand pandar to their bed;

Drunk on the dead, and medicined
 With spiced imperial dust,
In a short night they reeled to find
 Ten centuries of lust.

So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme,
 Stuffed love's infinity,
And sucked all lovers of all time
 To rarify ecstasy.

Helen's the hair shuts out from me
 Verona's livid skies;
Gypsy the lips I press; and see
 Two Antonys in your eyes.

The unheard invisible lovely dead
 Lie with us in this place,
And ghostly hands above my head
 Close face to straining face;

Their blood is wine along our limbs;
 Their whispering voices wreathe
Savage forgotten drowsy hymns
 Under the names we breathe;

Woven from their tomb, and one with it,
 The night wherein we press;
Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit
 Your flaming nakedness.

For the uttermost years have cried and clung
 To kiss your mouth to mine;
And hair long dust was caught, was flung,
 Hand shaken to hand divine,

And Life has fired, and Death not shaded,
 All Time's uncounted bliss,
And the height o' the world has flamed and faded,
 Love, that our love be this!

The Fish