Fernando Pessoa

“ 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. ”

“ O hands that clasped erewhile Hadrian's warm hands,
That now found them but cold!
O hair bound erstwhile with the pressing bands!
O eyes too diffidently bold!
O bare female male-body like
A god that dawns into humanity!
O lips whose opening redness erst could strike
Lust's seats with a soiled art's variety!
O fingers skilled in things not to be named! ”

“ These things are things that now must be no more.
The rain is silent, and the Emperor
Sinks by the couch. His grief is like a rage,
For the gods take away the life they give
And spoil the beauty they made live.
He weeps and knows that every future age
Is staring at him out of the to-be.
His love is on a universal stage.
A thousand unborn eyes weep with his misery.
Antinous is dead, is dead forever,
Is dead forever and the loves lament.
Venus herself, that was Adonis' lover,
Seeing him again, having lived, dead again,
Lends her great skyey grief now to be blent
With Hadrian's pain. ”

“ Now no caressing hands anoint
With growing joy that body's lusting lore.
The rain falls, and he lies like one who hath
Forgotten all the gestures of his love
And lies awake waiting their hot return. ”

“ Thy death has given me a newer lust—
A flesh-lust raging for eternity.
On my imperial will I put my trust
That the high gods, that made me emperor be,
Will not annul from a more real life
My wish that thou shouldst live for e'er and stand
A fleshly presence on their better land,
More beautiful and as beautiful, for there
No things impossible our wishes mar
Nor pain our hearts with change and time and strife. ”