I was so happy there; so fleeting was my stay, -- What wonder if, assailed with vistas so divine, I only lived to search and sample them the day When between dawn and dusk the sultan's courts were mine! Speak not of other worlds of happiness to be, As though in any fond imaginary sphere Lay more to tempt man's soul to immortality Than ripens for his bliss abundant now and here! Flowerlike I hope to die as flowerlike was my birth. Rooted in Nature's just benignant law like them, I want no better joys than those that from green Earth My spirit's blossom drew through the sweet body's stem. I see no dread in death, no horror to abhor. I never thought it else than but to cease to dwell Spectator, and resolve most naturally once more Into the dearly loved eternal spectacle. Unto the fields and flowers this flesh I found so fair I yield; do you, dear friend, over your rose-crowned wine, Murmur my name some day as though my lips were there, And frame your mouth as though its blushing kiss were mine. Yea, where the banquet-hall is brilliant with young men, You whose bright youth it might have thrilled my breast to know, Drink . . . and perhaps my lips, insatiate even then Of lips to hang upon, may find their loved ones so. Unto the flush of dawn and evening I commend This immaterial self and flamelike part of me, -- Unto the azure haze that hangs at the world's end, The sunshine on the hills, the starlight on the sea, -- Unto angelic Earth, whereof the lives of those Who love and dream great dreams and deeply feel may be The elemental cells and nervules that compose Its divine consciousness and joy and harmony. Fragments I In that fair capital where Pleasure, crowned Amidst her myriad courtiers, riots and rules, I too have been a suitor. Radiant eyes Were my life's warmth and sunshine, outspread arms My gilded deep horizons. I rejoiced In yielding to all amorous influence And multiple impulsion of the flesh, To feel within my being surge and sway The force that all the stars acknowledge too. Amid the nebulous humanity Where I an atom crawled and cleaved and sundered, I saw a million motions, but one law; And from the city's splendor to my eyes The vapors passed and there was nought but Love, A ferment turbulent, intensely fair, Where Beauty beckoned and where Strength pursued. II There was a time when I thought much of Fame, And laid the golden edifice to be That in the clear light of eternity Should fitly house the glory of my name. But swifter than my fingers pushed their plan, Over the fair foundation scarce begun, While I with lovers dallied in the sun, The ivy clambered and the rose-vine ran. And now, too late to see my vision, rise, In place of golden pinnacles and towers, Only some sunny mounds of leaves and flowers, Only beloved of birds and butterflies.