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(From London Nights, 1895)
I FOR God’s sake, let me love you, and give over | |
| These tedious protestations of a lover; | |
| We’re of one mind to love, and there’s no let: | |
| Remember that, and all the rest forget. | |
| And let’s be happy, mistress, while we may, | 5 |
| Ere you to-morrow shall be called to-day. | |
| To-morrow may be heedless, idle-hearted: | |
| One night’s enough for love to have met and parted. | |
| Then be it now, and I’ll not say that I | |
| In many several deaths for you would die; | 10 |
| And I’ll not ask you to declare that you | |
| Will longer love than women mostly do. | |
| Leave words to them whom words, not doings, move, | |
| And let our silence answer for our love. | |
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II O woman! I am jealous of the eyes | 15 |
| That look upon you; all my looks are spies | |
| That do but lurk and follow you about, | |
| Restless to find some guilty secret out. | |
| I am unhappy if I see you not, | |
| Unhappy if I see you; tell me what | 20 |
| That smile betokens? what close thing is hid | |
| Beneath the half-way lifting of a lid? | |
| Who is it, tell me, I so dread to meet, | |
| Just as we turn the corner of the street? | |
| Daily I search your baffling eyes to see | 25 |
| Who knows what new admitted company? | |
| And, sick with dread to find things I seek, | |
| I tremble at the name you do not speak. | |
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III I know your lips are bought like any fruit; | |
| I know your love, and of your love the root; | 30 |
| I know your kisses toll for love that dies | |
| In kissing, to be buried in your eyes; | |
| I know I am degraded for your sake, | |
| And that my shame will not so much as make | |
| Your glory, or be reckoned in the debt | 35 |
| Of memories you are mindful to forget. | |
| All this I know, and, knowing it, I come | |
| Delighted to my daily martyrdom; | |
| And, rich in love beyond the common store, | |
| Become for you a beggar, to implore | 40 |
| The broken crumbs that from your table fall, | |
| Freely, in your indifference, on all. | |
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IV I loved her; and you say she loved me not. | |
| Well, if I loved her? And if she forgot, | |
| Well, I have not forgotten even yet: | 45 |
| Time, and spent tears, may teach me to forget. | |
| And so she loves another, and did then | |
| When she was heaven and earth to me, and when, | |
| Truly, she made me happy. It may be: | |
| I only know how good she was to me. | 50 |
| Friend, to have loved, to have been made happy thus, | |
| What better fate has life in store for us, | |
| The dream of life from which we have to wake, | |
| Happier, why not? why not for a dream’s sake? | |
| To have been loved is well, and well enough | 55 |
| For any man: but ’tis enough to love. | |
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