Here in my glass is blood of kings,

The life-blood of a race that lies

Long dead. The jewels burning in your rings

Are an Egyptian woman's eyes.

Your beads are dead bones; even my breath

Breathes hot words that were others' pain.

Now these fair things are ours awhile, till death

Brings us to quiet sleep again.

Then we shall put our love aside

For lovers of a later birth,

And leave to them this body's fragrant pride,

For jewels, in the heart of earth.

Midnight at last! And you, I know,

Are sleeping there

Peaceful. Stars keep

Great guard upon you. Calm, and still, and white

You are. One moment all your pale swift hair

Is quiet as the night.

Here in this mud, this beastliness

Of war, the thought

Of your soft sleep

Soothes a tired mind as a rare ointment may

Comfort a wound, sweet-scented ointment brought

From strange lands, far away.

I watched the moon behind the trees

Float in a sea of sky.

The aspen whispers in the breeze,

The rest is silence now. And I

Can feel my loneliness around

Me fall. No human face

There is. None speaks. Never a sound

Save whispering leaves in this still place.

I have two friends, and they are dead,

Perhaps about their graves

Are trees that whisper overhead,

While in the grass the nettle waves.