With one great gesture of my love-mad arms Would that I could embrace the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. With one unending pressure of my lips I wish that I could kiss the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. With one great spasm of ecstasy supreme Would that I could possess the entire world, The entire world of love-inspiring women. THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR The children of the poor are little plants That grow in sandy soil midst rocks and weeds And rusty cans of tin, and other junk Within the gloomy shadow of a wall, The gloomy shadow of a mildewed wall; Poor little plants! poor children of the poor. THE CALL OF SEX Know you that bottomless and boundless sea, Each heaving billow whereof is a woman? Oh, how my love-parched body craves to plunge Into the soothing substance of this sea!... Oh, for the joy of absolute abandon To the caressing furore of this sea; The frantic joy of breaking all restrictions, Of daring all the dangers of this sea! The ecstatic and the harrowing sensation Of rising, ever rising on a wave, A giant wave that rises, ever rises, And then to be replunged into the deep! The all-absorbing, all-inclusive deep. What if the mouth doth swallow liquid bitter; What if the heinous sharks men call disease Snap at my flesh, infecting me with poison, And even what if that mysterious mermaid, That moon-pale Undine claim me as her own And seal our union with the kiss of death? What of it? Does not all life end in death? Give me the death of Tristan and Isolde: I die for life and love,--I fear not death. IMMORTALITY At dawn of day the stars die one by one. They only seem to die, but do not die. There is no death for humans, or for stars. What we call life and death is only rhythm. It is all cadence, measure, rest, inflection, The poetry, the music of the spheres. The universe is one stupendous poem Whereof the suns and stars are words and letters, And we frail humans, punctuation marks. TO LIVE OR NOT TO LIVE To be or not to be is not the question; The question is, to live or not to live. Alive or dead or only vegetating, One thing is sure, we cannot help but being. To live! to be alive; to live intensely! To live with every fibre of the frame, With every sinew, every nerve and muscle; To live like this, or not to live at all. But we are cowards, we are fools and misers, Afraid to live--afraid to pay the price-- The price of youth,--the price of youth is age; The price--the price of joy is pain. And disenchantment is the price of love. And Life--the price of Life is Death. Come, let us live, and let us live intensely. Life! Life! more Life! more Life at any cost.