In these red labyrinths of London
I find that I have chosen
the strangest of all callings,

save that, in its way, any calling is strange.
Like the alchemist
who sought the philosopher's stone

in quicksilver,
I shall make everyday words--
the gambler's marked cards, the common coin--

give off the magic that was their
when Thor was both the god and the din,
the thunderclap and the prayer.

In today's dialect
I shall say, in my fashion, eternal things:
I shall try to be worthy

of the great echo of Byron.
This dust that I am will be invulnerable.
If a woman shares my love

my verse will touch the tenth sphere of the concentric heavens;
if a woman turns my love aside
I will make of my sadness a music,

a full river to resound through time.
I shall live by forgetting myself.
I shall be the face I glimpse and forget,

I shall be Judas who takes on
the divine mission of being a betrayer,
I shall be Caliban in his bog,

I shall be a mercenary who dies
without fear and without faith,
I shall be Polycrates, who looks in awe

upon the seal returned by fate.
I will be the friend who hates me.
The persian will give me the nightingale, and Rome the sword.

Masks, agonies, resurrections
will weave and unweave my life,
and in time I shall be Robert Browning.