I have to live in outward seeming as do my neighbours, even to keeping a black footman, gorgeously dressed, with bare legs.
Here at my window grows a wild aloe, and it is in flower.

Once only in fifty years does this aloe flower, and I pick its sweet verdure now and offer it to you.

There it lies, beside this letter that I am writing.

It is typical of myself, for only once has my heart flowered, and it will be only once in fifty years.

The perfume of the flower is like an everlasting bud from the last tree of Time.
See, my Sheila, your drunken, reckless lover pulls this sweet offering from his garden and offers it to you.