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«My heart is singing like a morning bird.
A great hope from the gods comes down to me
And bids my heart to subtler sense be stirred
And think not that strange evil of thee
That to think thee mortal would be.
«My love, my love! My god-love! Let me kiss
On thy cold lips thy hot lips now immortal,
Greeting thee at Death's portal's happiness,
For to the gods Death's portal is Life's portal.
«Thus is the memory of thee a god
Already, already a statue made of me--
Of that part of me that, like a great sea,
Girds in me a great red empire more broad
Than all the lands and peoples that are in
My power's reach. Thus art thou myself made
In that great stretch Olympic that betrays
The true-wholed gods present in river and glade
And hours eternal in its different days.
«So strong my love is that it is thyself,
Thy body as it was ere death was it,
Towering above the silence infinite
That girds round life and its unduring pelf.
Even as thou wert in life, thy corporal shade
Is in the presence of the gods. My love
Permits not that its carnal being fade
Or one whit false to fleshly presence prove.
Creeds may arise and pass, and passions change,
Other ways may be born out of Time's dream,
But this our love, made but thy body, 'll range
On deathless meads from happy stream to stream.
«Were there no Olympus for thee, my love
Would make thee one, where thou sole god mightst prove,
And I thy sole adorer, glad to be
