My love, I see you through my tears. 
No pity in your face I see. 
I have sailed far across the years: 
Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me.

My love, I have an island seen,
So shadowed, God’s most piercing star
Shall never see where we have been,
Shall never whisper where we are.

There we will wander, you and I,
Down guilty and delightful ways,
While palm-trees plait their fingers high
Against your God’s enormous gaze.

For oh—­the joy of two and two,
Your Paradise shall never see
The ecstasy of me and you,
The white delight of you and me.

I know the penalty—­the clutch
Of God’s great rocks upon my keel. 
Drowned in the ocean of Too Much—­
So ends your thief—­yet let me steal....

The Slave of God she froze her face,
The Slave of God she paid no heed,
And thund’ring down high Heaven’s space
Loud angels mocked the sailor’s greed.

The diamond sun arose, and tossed
A billion gems across the sea. 
“The Slave of God is lost, is lost,
The Slave of God is lost to me....”

He grounded on the common beach,
He trod the little towns of men,
And God removed from his reach
The cup of Heaven’s passion then,
And gave him vulgar love and speech,
And gave him threescore years and ten.