Prayer
You are all that is lovely and light,
Aziza whom I adore,
And, waking, after the night,
I am weary with dreams of you.
Every nerve in my heart is tense and sore
As I rise to another morning apart from you.
I dream of your luminous eyes,
Aziza whom I adore!
Of the ruffled silk of your hair,
I dream, and the dreams are lies.
But I love them, knowing no more
Will ever be mine of you
Aziza, my life's despair.
I would burn for a thousand days,
Aziza whom I adore,
Be tortured, slain, in unheard of ways
If you pitied the pain I bore.
You pity! Your bright eyes, fastened on other things,
Are keener to sting my soul, than scorpion stings!
You are all that is lovely to me,
All that is light,
One white rose in a Desert of weariness.
I only live in the night,
The night, with its fair false dreams of you,
You and your loveliness.
Give me your love for a day,
A night, an hour:
If the wages of sin are Death
I am willing to pay.
What is my life but a breath
Of passion burning away?
Away for an unplucked flower.
O Aziza whom I adore,
Aziza my one delight,
Only one night, I will die before day,
And trouble your life no more.
The Aloe
My life was like an Aloe flower, beneath an orient sky,
Your sunshine touched it for an hour; it blossomed but to die.
Torn up, cast out, on rubbish heaps where red flames work their will
Each atom of the Aloe keeps the flower-time fragrance still.
Memory
How I loved you in your sleep,
With the starlight on your hair!
The touch of your lips was sweet,
Aziza whom I adore,
I lay at your slender feet,
And against their soft palms pressed,
I fitted my face to rest.
As winds blow over the sea
From Citron gardens ashore,
Came, through your scented hair,
The breeze of the night to me.
My lips grew arid and dry,
My nerves were tense,
Though your beauty soothe the eye
It maddens the sense.
Every curve of that beauty is known to me,
Every tint of that delicate roseleaf skin,
And these are printed on every atom of me,
Burnt in on every fibre until I die.
And for this, my sin,
I doubt if ever, though dust I be,
The dust will lose the desire,
The torment and hidden fire,
Of my passionate love for you.
Aziza whom I adore,
My dust will be full of your beauty, as is the blue
And infinite ocean full of the azure sky.
In the light that waxed and waned
Playing about your slumber in silver bars,
As the palm trees swung their feathery fronds athwart the stars,
How quiet and young you were,
Pale as the Champa flowers, violet veined,
That, sweet and fading, lay in your loosened hair.
How sweet you were in your sleep,
With the starlight on your hair!
Your throat thrown backwards, bare,
And touched with circling moonbeams, silver white
On the couch's sombre shade.
O Aziza my one delight,
When Youth's passionate pulses fade,
And his golden heart beats slow,
When across the infinite sky
I see the roseate glow
Of my last, last sunset flare,
I shall send my thoughts to this night
And remember you as I die,
The one thing, among all the things of this earth, found fair.
How sweet you were in your sleep,
With the starlight, silver and sable, across your hair!