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(From Poems and Ballads, 1866)
I. LIFT up thy lips, turn round, look back for love, | |
| Blind love that comes by night and casts out rest; | |
| Of all things tired thy lips look weariest, | |
| Save the long smile that they are wearied of. | |
| Ah sweet, albeit no love be sweet enough, | 5 |
| Choose of two loves and cleave unto the best; | |
| Two loves at either blossom of thy breast | |
| Strive until one be under and one above. | |
| Their breath is fire upon the amorous air, | |
| Fire in thine eyes and where thy lips suspire: | 10 |
| And whosoever hath seen thee, being so fair, | |
| Two things turn all his life and blood to fire; | |
| A strong desire begot on great despair, | |
| A great despair cast out by strong desire. | |
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II. Where between sleep and life some brief space is, | 15 |
| With love like gold bound round about the head, | |
| Sex to sweet sex with lips and limbs is wed, | |
| Turning the fruitful feud of hers and his | |
| To the waste wedlock of a sterile kiss; | |
| Yet from them something like as fire is shed | 20 |
| That shall not be assuaged till death be dead, | |
| Though neither life nor sleep can find out this. | |
| Love made himself of flesh that perisheth | |
| A pleasure-house for all the loves his kin; | |
| But on the one side sat a man like death, | 25 |
| And on the other a woman sat like sin. | |
| So with veiled eyes and sobs between his breath | |
| Love turned himself and would not enter in. | |
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III. Love, is it love or sleep or shadow or light | |
| That lies between thine eyelids and thine eyes? | 30 |
| Like a flower laid upon a flower it lies, | |
| Or like the night’s dew laid upon the night. | |
| Love stands upon thy left hand and thy right, | |
| Yet by no sunset and by no moonrise | |
| Shall make thee man and ease a woman’s sighs, | 35 |
| Or make thee woman for a man’s delight. | |
| To what strange end hath some strange god made fair | |
| The double blossom of two fruitless flowers? | |
| Hid love in all the folds of all thy hair, | |
| Fed thee on summers, watered thee with showers, | 40 |
| Given all the gold that all the seasons wear | |
| To thee that art a thing of barren hours? | |
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IV. Yea, love, I see; it is not love but fear. | |
| Nay, sweet, it is not fear but love, I know; | |
| Or wherefore should thy body’s blossom blow | 45 |
| So sweetly, or thine eyelids leave so clear | |
| Thy gracious eyes that never made a tear— | |
| Though for their love our tears like blood should flow, | |
| Though love and life and death should come and go, | |
| So dreadful, so desirable, so dear? | 50 |
| Yea, sweet, I know; I saw in what swift wise | |
| Beneath the woman’s and the water’s kiss | |
| Thy moist limbs melted into Salmacis, | |
| And the large light turned tender in thine eyes, | |
| And all thy boy’s breath softened into sighs; | 55 |
But Love being blind, how should he know of this?
Au Musée du Louvre, Mars, 1863. | |
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