FAREWELL TO JULIET

An ox–eyed queen of full–fed majestyAnd giant height and comeliness ideal.She too her tale related, as was due,In measured tones, her age, her birth, her name,Bourgeois her parents, friends of order too,And good Imperialists of honest fame,Her age eighteen, her height seven feet, her waistAn ell and more in its circumference,Her leg above the knee,…

And, like a spendthrift, pawned my heritageTo pitiless Jews, and paid a monstrous tollTo knaves and usurers,–and all to wageFair war with black–legs, men who dared to gaugeMy youth’s bright honour as an antique thing,A broadsword to their fencing point and edge.So the game went. And even yet I clingTo my mad humour, reckoning up…

Went forgetting our trysts, Burkát Shemmá–u,all the joys of our love, our love’s home, Khalsá–u.Muhayyátu, she thee forgets, Sifáhu,thee, Fitákon, Aádibon, thee Wafá–u.Thee, Riád el Katá, thee, vale of Shérbub,‘Anak, thee, Shobatána, and thee, Ablá–u.Nay, ye lost are to me with my lost glory;nay, though tears be my meat, weeping wins no woman.Yet, a snare…

My joy was but one day of all the days,And clouds have blotted it and hid the sun.Thou wert so much to me! But soon I knewHow small a part could mine be in thy life,That all a woman may endure or doCounts little to her hero in the strife.I do not blame thee who…

In gardens green which front the violet sea,A happy fortress shut and guarded well,And cradled ever on the mountain’s knee:Here Monsieur Blanc, sad prince of industry,Has reared the palace which men call his hell:And here in autumn days, when winds blow free,Pleasure shall lead us to sin’s citadel.Alas for vice! Yet, who dares moralize,In the…

I, the Heresiarch, wait and pace these halls at leisureAmong the Orthodox, the unfallen Sons of God.How sweet in truth Heaven is, its floors of sandal wood,Its old–world furniture, its linen long in press,Its incense, mummeries, flowers, its scent of holiness!Each house has its own smell. The smell of Heaven to meIntoxicates and haunts,–and hurts….