Song of a tribe of the ancient Egyptians

With dancing girls and sweet birds’ criesBehind the gateways of the brain;And that no-place which gave them birth, shall closeThe rainbow and the rose:—Still may Time hold some golden spaceWhere I’ll unpack that scented storeOf song and flower and sky and face,And count, and touch, and turn them o’er,Musing upon them; as a mother, whoHas…

And smiled to greet the pleasant painOf that innocent young past.But I jumped to feel how sharp had beenThe pain when it did live,How the faded dreams of Nineteen-tenWere Hell in Nineteen-five.The boy’s woe was as keen and clear,The boy’s love just as true,And the One Before the Last, my dear,Hurt quite as much as…

Stiffen in darkness, left aloneTo crumble in our separate night;When your swift hair is quiet in death,And through the lips corruption thrustHas 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…

Slowly, to one long livid oozing plainClosed down by the strange eyeless heavens.He lies;And waits; and once in timeless sick surmiseThrough the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speckOf moveless horror;…

I have tended and loved, year upon year, I in the solitudeWaiting, quiet and glad-eyed in the dark, knowing that once a gleamGlowed and went through the wood. Still I abode strong in a golden dream,Unrecaptured.For I, I that had faith, knew that a face would glanceOne day, white in the dim woods, and a…

And their lips meet, and they do kiss,— So I have heard.They queerly find some healing so,And strange attainment in the touch;There is a secret lovers know,— I have read as much.And theirs no longer joy nor smart,Changing or ending, night or day;But mouth to mouth, and heart on heart,— So lovers say.