| AS those of old drank mummia | |
| To fire their limbs of lead, | |
| Making dead kings from Africa | |
| Stand pandar to their bed; | |
| |
| Drunk on the dead, and medicined | 5 |
| With spiced imperial dust, | |
| In a short night they reeled to find | |
| Ten centuries of lust. | |
| |
| So I, from paint, stone, tale, and rhyme, | |
| Stuffed love’s infinity, | 10 |
| And sucked all lovers of all time | |
| To rarify ecstasy. | |
| |
| Helen’s the hair shuts out from me | |
| Verona’s livid skies; | |
| Gypsy the lips I press; and see | 15 |
| Two Antonys in your eyes. | |
| |
| The unheard invisible lovely dead | |
| Lie with us in this place, | |
| And ghostly hands above my head | |
| Close face to straining face; | 20 |
| |
| Their blood is wine along our limbs; | |
| Their whispering voices wreathe | |
| Savage forgotten drowsy hymns | |
| Under the names we breathe; | |
| |
| Woven from their tomb, and one with it, | 25 |
| The night wherein we press; | |
| Their thousand pitchy pyres have lit | |
| Your flaming nakedness. | |
| |
| For the uttermost years have cried and clung | |
| To kiss your mouth to mine; | 30 |
| And hair long dust was caught, was flung, | |
| Hand shaken to hand divine, | |
| |
| And Life has fired, and Death not shaded, | |
| All Time’s uncounted bliss, | |
| And the height o’ the world has flamed and faded, | 35 |
| Love, that our love be this! | |
