Alice Corbin

From “Songs from a Book of Airs”

I KNOW you beautiful and fair

Beyond delight;

I know our bodies bare

In love unite,

Yet weep for passion’s flight.

I weep because the rose

Must fade away;

I weep because of words

That lead astray;

I weep that passion never tells

What it longs to say.

Though your breast lie on my breast,

Still in vain the lover’s quest;

Like the dryads in the woods

Powerless to tell their moods—

In a world of forest spells

Never half the lover tells.