[Dedicated to Frank Harris, editor of Vanity Fair] On the black night, beneath the winter moon, I clothed me in the limbs of Codia, Swooning my soul out into her red throat, So that the glimmer of our skins, the tune Og our ripe rythm, seemed the hideous play Of death-worms crawling on a corpse,afloat With life that takes its thirst Only from things accurst. Closer than Clodia's clasp, Death had me down To his black heart, and fed upon my breath, So that we seemed a stilness -whiter than The stars, more silent than the stars, a crown Of Stars ! For in the icy kiss of death I found that God that is denied to man So long as love and thought And life avail him aught.