Classic Poem

Lances slanted against a froward sky,
So do the days of my life appear before me,
O verily Beloved.
Tempt me not, therefore, that I linger
With my long, pointed, red morocco shoes
Scuffing the fallen vine-leaves
A-skip upon the lozenged marbles of your floor.
I am not a man for chess and blue cushions,
For sheep's-eyeing across lute-strings
Of a dapper afternoon.
What were you among the cooks and water-boys,
Camping on a wind-vexed plain at nightfall
Amid the chattering stalks of last year's grasses,
While I, in some lost distance, wage a war
Against the goblins of a mouldering generation?
Would you follow my torn banners where they flicker
In and out of the cloven bellies of mountains,
And the hail-stones gash like javelins,
And the sun dries up the roots of hair
Till my horse is naked as a woman
Bartered for an arid territory?
There are such, my lady,
And I have lands and lances to compel them,
And owe them nothing but a five-petalled kiss
Blooming between a brace of bloody battles.