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A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight

        They mouth love's language. Gnash
        The thirteen teeth
        Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
        Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
        Love's breath in you is stale, worded or sung,
        As sour as cat's breath,
        Harsh of tongue.

        This grey that stares
        Lies not, stark skin and bone.
        Leave greasy lips their kissing. None
        Will choose her what you see to mouth upon.
        Dire hunger holds his hour.
        Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears.
        Pluck and devour!

                          1917

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Nightpiece

        Gaunt in gloom,
        The pale stars their torches,
        Enshrouded, wave.
        Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume,
        Arches on soaring arches,
        Night's sindark nave.

        Seraphim,
        The lost hosts awaken
        To service till
        In moonless gloom each lapses muted, dim,
        Raised when she has and shaken
        Her thurible.

        And long and loud,
        To night's nave upsoaring,
        A starknell tolls
        As the bleak incense surges, cloud on cloud,
        Voidward from the adoring
        Waste of souls.

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 A Flower Given to my Daughter

        Frail the white rose and frail are
        Her hands that gave
        Whose soul is sere and paler
        Than time's wan wave.

        Rosefrail and fair -- yet frailest
        A wonder wild
        In gentle eyes thou veilest,
        My blueveined child.

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Simples

             O bella bionda,
             Sei come l'onda!

        Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild
        The moon a web of silence weaves
        In the still garden where a child
        Gathers the simple salad leaves.

        A moondew stars her hanging hair
        And moonlight kisses her young brow
        And, gathering, she sings an air:
        Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!

        Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear
        To shield me from her childish croon
        And mine a shielded heart for her
        Who gathers simples of the moon.

                                ca. 1914
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Ecce Puer

        Of the dark past
        A child is born;
        With joy and grief
        My heart is torn.

        Calm in his cradle
        The living lies.
        May love and mercy
        Unclose his eyes!

        Young life is breathed
        On the glass;
        The world that was not
        Comes to pass.

        A child is sleeping:
        An old man gone.
        O, father forsaken,
        Forgive your son!

                      1932