“HauntedGulp down your wine, old friends of mine,Roar through the darkness, stamp and singAnd lay ghost hands on everything,But leave the noonday's warm sunshineTo living lads for mirth and wine.I met you suddenly down the street,Strangers assume your phantom faces,You grin at me from daylight places,Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greetDead men down the morning street.”

“Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The red-faced old centurion started up, Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said, “Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead, Dead in the first year of this damned campaign— The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again. Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, But we need pity also, you and I, Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, Who live to see the Legion come to this, Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by, The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!” “Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight. The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right. If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, God damn it! you’ll not better them by drinking. They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, And these same men before the autumn’s fall Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.”

“Down, wanton, down! Have you no shameThat at the whisper of Love's name,Or Beauty's, presto! up you raiseYour angry head and stand at gaze?Poor bombard-captain, sworn to reachThe ravelin and effect a breach--Indifferent what you storm or why,So be that in the breach you die!Love may be blind, but Love at leastKnows what is man and what mere beast;Or Beauty wayward, but requiresMore delicacy from her squires.Tell me, my witless, whose one boastCould be your staunchness at the post,When were you made a man of partsTo think fine and profess the arts?Will many-gifted Beauty comeBowing to your bald rule of thumb,Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!”

“As I walked out one harvest nightAbout the stroke of One,The Moon attained to her full heightStood beaming like the Sun.She exorcised the ghostly wheatTo mute assent in Love's defeatWhose tryst had now begun.The fields lay sick beneath my tread,A tedious owlet cried;The nightingale above my headWith this or that replied,Like man and wife who nightly keepInconsequent debate in sleepAs they dream side by side.Your phantom wore the moon's cold mask,My phantom wore the same,Forgetful of the feverish taskIn hope of which they came,Each image held the other's eyesAnd watched a grey distraction riseTo cloud the eager flame.To cloud the eager flame of love,To fog the shining gate:They held the tyrannous queen aboveSole mover of their fate,They glared as marble statues glareAcross the tessellated stairOr down the Halls of State.And now cold earth was Arctic sea,Each breath came dagger keen,Two bergs of glinting ice were we,The broad moon sailed between;There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned,And Love went by upon the windAs though it had not been.- Full Moon”

“To Juan at the Winter Solstice There is one story and one story onlyThat will prove worth your telling,Whether as learned bard or gifted child;To it all lines or lesser gauds belongThat startle with their shiningSuch common stories as they stray into.Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,Or strange beasts that beset you,Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turnsBelow the Boreal Crown,Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?Water to water, ark again to ark,From woman back to woman:So each new victim treads unfalteringlyThe never altered circuit of his fate,Bringing twelve peers as witnessBoth to his starry rise and starry fall.Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,All fish below the thighs?She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,How many the King hold back?Royally then he barters life for love.Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,Whose coils contain the ocean,Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,Battles three days and nights,To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,The owl hoots from the elder,Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.The log groans and confesses:There is one story and one story only.Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,Do not forget what flowersThe great boar trampled down in ivy time.Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,Her sea-blue eyes were wildBut nothing promised that is not performed.”

“On PortentsIf strange things happen where she is,So that men say that graves openAnd the dead walk, or that futurityBecomes a womb and the unborn are shed,Such portents are not to be wondered at,Being tourbillions in Time madeBy the strong pulling of her bladed mindThrough that ever-reluctant element.”

“I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot", or "That Claudius", or "Claudius the Stammerer", or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius", am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.”