A foolish rhythm turns in my idle head
As a wind-mill turns in the wind on an empty sky.
Why it is when love, which men call deathless, is dead,
That memory, men call fugitive, will not die?
Is love not dead? yet I hear that tune if I lie
Dreaming awake in the night on my lonely bed,
And an old thought turns with the old tune in my head
As a wind-mill turns in the wind on an empty sky.
Idealism
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 perfect body, Earth’s most eloquent
Music, divinest human harmony;
Her body now a silent instrument,
That ‘neath my touch shall wake amd make for me
The strains I have but dreamed of, never known.
In the Temple
The grey and misty night,
Slim trees that hold the night among
Their branches, and, along
The vague Embankment, light on light.
The sudden, racing lights!
I can just hear, distinct, aloof,
The gaily clattering hoof
Beating the rhythm of festive nights.
The gardens to the weeping moon
Sigh back the breath of tears.
O the refrain of years on years
‘Neath the weeping moon!
