WHEREIN, THOUGH LOVE'S DEVOTED SERVANT THESE TWENTY YEARS, HIS SOLE WAGE IS TEARS

Felicitous in dreams, to brood content,
To grasp at shadows, chase the summer gust,
Through shoreless fathomless leagues of water thrust,
To build on sand, write on the windy tent
Of air, gaze at the sun till these eyes, spent
And broken by his splendour, drop to dust,
To drive down some soft slope with empty lust
The storm-hooved stag with cattle slow and bent;
Sightless and faint, begging an end to all,
Which I seek day and night with heart on fire,
I call on Love and Laura, Death I call.
So through two decades bitter with desire
I have endured the worst, because I took
Under a sinister star both bait and hook!