YOU say there is no love, my love,
Unless it lasts for aye!
Oh, folly, there are interludes
Better than the play.
You say lest it endure, sweet love,
It is not love for aye?
Oh, blind! Eternity can be
All in one little day.
A stone may become a spring
if it gets such a touch.
A spring may become a stone
if it gets such a blow.
O my Love, you only know
how to transform a spring into a stone,
don't know how to transform a stone
into a watery murmuring spring.
You may have other loves,
Red mouths to kiss.
Why should you lose
That loveliness for this?
No loveliness of mine
That comes and goes
Wild-fuchsia-like,
Need blind you to the rose.
So I, who bless
Your hot and passionate ways,
Still need the starry loves
Of virgin days.
You make the sunshine of my heart
And its tempestuous shower;
Sometimes the thought of you is like
A lilac bush in flower,
Yea, honey-sweet as hives in May.
And then the pang of it will strike
My bosom with a fiery smart,
As though love's deeply planted dart
Drained all its life away.
My thoughts hum round you, Dear, like bees
About a bank of thyme,
Or round the yellow blossoms of
The heavy-scented lime.
Ah, sweeter you than honeydew,
Yet dark the ways of love,
You hate the telephone
but will not see me
face to face
so I am left
beseeching you
long-distance,
trying to thread our love
along the telephone poles
of Vermont,
trying to tunnel it
under the Atlantic
as if it were
a rare fossil
I'd unearthed,
or an offshore pipe
bearing precious oil.
But it is your face
I love,
your funny grin
that now seems
cruel around the edges.
You do not wish to be
cruel-you,
the kindest person in the world,
You are great in love.
You are bold.
My every step is timid.
I'll do nothing bad to you,
but can hardly do you any good.
It seems you are
leading me
off the beaten path through a forest.
Now we're up to our waist in wildflowers.
I don't even know
what flowers they are.
Past experience is of no help here.
I don't know
what to do or how.
You're tired.
You ask to be carried in my arms.
Already you're in my arms.
They did the deed of darkness
In their own mid-light.
He plucked a gray field mouse
Suddenly in the wind.
The small dead fly alive
Helplessly in his beak,
His cold pride, helpless.
All she receives is life.
They are terrified. They touch.
Life is too much.
She flies away sorrowing.
Sorrowing, she goes alone.
Then her small falcon, gone.
Will not rise here again.
Smaller than she, he goes
MY SOUL is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all to hear through fortune’s jar
One promissory word.
A sound as simple as the low
Quick sliding gurgle of a rill,
And yet with power to overflow
A world with blissful will!
I feel as though the very air
Was breathen from the heart of Love,
As Pleasure in the sun’s bright lair
Sat brooding like a dove!
A billow of the sunny sea,
A cloudlet of the summer sky,
How wide is their felicity—
So widely blest am I!
YEAR after year the cowslips fill the meadow,
Year after year the skylarks thrill the air,
Year after year, in sunshine or in shadow,
Rolls the world round, love, and finds us as we were.
Year after year, as sure as birds' returning,
Or field-flowers' blossoming above the wintry mould,
Year after year, in work, or mirth, or mourning,
Love we with love's own youth, that never can grow old.
Sweetheart and ladye-love, queen of boyish passion,
Strong hope of manhood, content of age began;
Ye restless thoughts, that harbour discontent,
Cease your assaults and let my heart lament,
And let my tongue have leave to tell my grief,
That she may pity, though not grant relief.
Pity would help, alas, what love hath almost slain,
And salve the wound that fester'd this disdain.
