Lift up your large black satin eyes which are like cushions where one sinks! + 

Fawn at my feet, fantastic Sphinx! and sing me all your memories! + 

Sing to me of the Jewish maid who wandered with the Holy Child, + 

And how you led them through the wild, and how they slept beneath your shade. + 

Sing to me of that odorous green eve when crouching by the marge + 

You heard from Adrian’s gilded barge the laughter of Antinous + 

And lapped the stream and fed your drouth and watched with hot and hungry stare + 

The ivory body of that rare young slave with his pomegranate mouth! + 

Sing to me of the Labyrinth in which the twi-formed bull was stalled! + 

Sing to me of the night you crawled across the temple’s granite plinth + 

When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew + 

In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores, + 

And the great torpid crocodile within the tank shed slimy tears, + 

And tare the jewels from his ears and staggered back into the Nile, + 

And the priests cursed you with shrill psalms as in your claws you seized their snake + 

And crept away with it to slake your passion by the shuddering palms. + 