The wind that sweetly sings in ocean caves,
Then dallies with the wallflowers on the tower
May fan assassins and sweep over graves.
What pleasure has a kiss that fever brings?
Or one grown cold with satisfied desire?
The love that on the senses fiercely plays,
Comes like a wind and passes like a fire.
The Most Precious Thing
What do men rate at the highest in life?
Diamonds that glow,
The finest in water,
In colour and form:
Such as an eastern king's favourite wife
Wears strung in a row,
Or, as those that in slaughter,
In sack or in storm
Of a citadel's heights,
Are torn from a Khalifah slain in the strife?
No. Diamonds decline when Love claims his own,
And freely are bartered for kisses alone.
Some say that virtue is prized more than all,
Virtue that scorns
The baseness and ill
The decalogue cites
And sternly forbids to great and to small.
But when on the horns
Of dilemma, men kill
Compunction, whose lights
Die in darkness profound,
Where mortals are fated to stumble and fall,
Renouncing for kisses the wisdom of time
To find in the sacrifice something sublime.
Rank, Riches and Fame have, each in their way,
A hold on the mind
That we think is supreme,
And sweep man along
To sated ambition's omnipotent sway:
Till one day we find
They are vain as a dream,
Or a beautiful song
Evanescently grand:
And the value we see of the brave display
Of Riches and Fame and Rank at their best,
Is far below kisses when put to the test.
Autumn
A light mist creeps across the downs:
A gleam through clouds is faintly seen:
The grass is wet with heavy dew:
Sear are the leaves that once were green.
I walk at midday when the sun
Throws still some welcome warmth and light:
A chill comes with the afternoon,
And icy is the air at night.
Summer is dead. Its shrouded form
Lies on the logs that make its pyre,
And fancy sees its ghost ascend,
A shadowy wraith above the fire.