The Beginning
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ome day I shall rise and leave my friendsAnd seek you again through the world's far ends,You whom I found so fair(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),My only god in the days that were.My eager feet shall find you again,Though the sullen years and the mark of painHave changed you wholly; for I shall know(How could I forget having loved you so?),In the sad half-light of evening,The face that was all my sunrising.So then at the ends of the earth I'll standAnd hold you fiercely by either hand,And seeing your age and ashen hairI'll curse the thing that once you were,Because it is changed and pale and old(Lips that were scarlet, hair that was gold!),And I loved you before you were old and wise,When the flame of youth was strong in your eyes,-- And my heart is sick with memories. 1908-1911 Sonnet: "Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire" Oh! Death will find me, long before I tireOf watching you; and swing me suddenlyInto the shade and loneliness and mireOf the last land! There, waiting patiently, One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,See a slow light across the Stygian tide,And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,And tremble. And I shall know that you have died, And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam --Most individual and bewildering ghost! -- And turn, and toss your brown delightful headAmusedly, among the ancient Dead. Sonnet: "I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true" I said I splendidly loved you; it's not true.Such long swift tides stir not a land-locked sea.On gods or fools the high risk falls -- on you --The clean clear bitter-sweet that's not for me.Love soars from earth to ecstasies unwist.Love is flung Lucifer-like from Heaven to Hell.But -- there are wanderers in the middle mist,Who cry for shadows, clutch, and cannot tellWhether they love at all, or, loving, whom:An old song's lady, a fool in fancy dress,Or phantoms, or their own face on the gloom;For love of Love, or from heart's loneliness.Pleasure's not theirs, nor pain. They doubt, and sigh,And do not love at all. Of these am I.
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