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Red mountains bowed before our lust,

We shook the stars with song.

Red cinder showers rose and fell,

As with a furious din

We battered at the gates of Hell,

Roaring to be let in.

Then Satan rose in angry pride:

“Who comes in such rude way?”

“The souls are we, who would not bide

“Until the Judgment Day.”

“Let saints and friars meekly sleep

“Till Gabriel’s trumpets boom;

“But we, whose souls be red and deep,

“Go laughing to our doom!”

“Red laughter, salt with savage brine,

“From crimson seas of sin!

“Unbar the brazen gates, you swine,

“And let your masters in!”

“Shackled on earth by fate and star,

“We writhed beneath the rods;

“But by the gods, in death we are

“The rulers of the gods!”

The Robes of the Righteous

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I am a saintly reformer,

basking in goodly reknown

Sure of applaud of the righteous,

cinctured in purity's gown.

Young men and old men revere me,

women and girls out of school

Come to me telling their secrets,

seeking my counseling cool.

Little they know of my story

when I was the water-front's toast.

Back in the days of my glory

down on the Barbary Coast.

Young and my lips full and crimson,

flaming with passionate blood,

My love was the leap of an ocean,

my passion the swing of the flood.

Changing and varied my fancies

yet no woman ever gave more

For I joyed in the man on my body

just as much as the one just before

Ah, nights that were lurid and gorgeous,

under the bar lamps blaze

Flutter of cars on the table,

faces that leered through the haze

Of smoke drifting up from the stogies,

the red liquor flowing free

And the shout of the salty ballass

that sailors sang from the sea.

The money scattered like water,

the pagan thrill of the dance

The hand that groped in my clothing,

the burning and meaning glance

Then the look as the stair I mounted,

the man that left the floor,

The joyous and panting waiting,

the stealthy knock at my door—

What if they knew, the elders,

that I was a Barbary whore?

Hiding my charms with meekness

under purity's gown

Sure of applaud of the righteous,

basking in goodly reknown.

A Roman Lady

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There is a strangeness in my soul

A dark and brooding sea.

Nor all the waves on Capri's shoal

Might stay the thirst of me.

For men have come and men have gone

For pleasure or for hire.

Though they lay broken at the dawn

They did not quench my fire.

My pity is a deathly ruth

I burn men with my eyes.

Oh, would all men were one strong youth

To break between my thighs.

Any many a man his fortune spread

To glut my ecstacy

As I lay panting on his bed

In shameless nudity.

But all of ancient Egypt's gold

Can never equal this,

Nor all the treasures kingdoms hold,

A single hour of bliss.

Within my villa's high domain

Are boys from Britain's rocks

And dark eyed slender lads from Spain

And Greeks with perfumed locks.

And youths of soft and subtle speech

From furtherest Orient,

Wherever arms of legions reach

And Roman chains are sent.

Why may I not be satiate

With kisses of some boy—

They only rouse my passions spate

I never know such joy

As when through chambers filled with noise

Of wails and pleas and sighs

I stride among my naked boys

With whips that bruise their thighs.

I drift through mists red flaming flung

On hills of ecstacies

As shoulder-wealed and buttock-stung

They shriek and kiss my knees.

Romance

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I am king of all the Ages

I am ruler of the stars

I am master of Time's pages

And I mock at chain and bars.

Now, as when I sailed the world

Ere the galley's sails were furled

And the barnacles had crusted on their spars.

I am strife, I am Life,

I am mistress, I am wife!

I am wilder than the sea wind, I am fiercer than the fire!

I am tale and song and fable, I am Akkad, I am Babel,

I am Calno, I am Carthage, I am Tyre!

For I walked the streets of Gaza

when the world was wild and young,

And I reveled in Carchemish when the golden minstrels sung;

All the world-road was my path, as I sang the songs of Gath

Or trod the streets of Nineveh where harlots roses flung.

I swam the wide Euphrates

where it wanders through the plain

And I saw the dawn come flaming over Tyre.

I walked the roads of Ammon

when the hills were veiled in rain,

And I watched the stars anon from the walls of Askalon

And I rose the plains of Palestine beneath the dawning's fire

When the leaves upon the trees danced

and fluttered in the breeze

And a slim girl of Juda went singing to a lyre.

Roundelay of The Roughneck

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Let others croon of lover's moon,

Of roses, birds on wing,

Maidens, the waltz's dreaming tune,—

Of strong thewed deeds I sing.

Let poets seek the tinted reek,

Perfume of ladies gay,

Of winds of wild outlands I speak,

The lash of far sea spray.

Of dear swamp brakes, of storm whipped lakes,

Dank jungle, reedy fen,

Of seas the pound the plunging strakes,

Of men and deeds of men.

Prospector; king of the battling ring;

Tarred slave of tide's behests,

Monarchs of muscle shall I sing,

Lords of the hairy chests.

Though some may stay 'neath cities away,

To toil with maul and hod,

To outer trails most take their way,

To lands yet scarcely trod.