| |
| I DREAMT I was in love again | |
| With the One Before the Last, | |
| And smiled to greet the pleasant pain | |
| Of that innocent young past. | |
| |
| But I jump’d to feel how sharp had been | 5 |
| The pain when it did live, | |
| How the faded dreams of Nineteen-ten | |
| Were Hell in Nineteen-five. | |
| |
| The boy’s woe was as keen and clear, | |
| The boy’s love just as true, | 10 |
| And the One Before the Last, my dear, | |
| Hurt quite as much as you. * * * * * | |
| Sickly I ponder’d how the lover | |
| Wrongs the unanswering tomb, | |
| And sentimentalizes over | 15 |
| What earn’d a better doom. | |
| |
| Gently he tombs the poor dim last time, | |
| Strews pinkish dust above, | |
| And sighs, ‘The dear dead boyish pastime; | |
| But this—ah, God!—is Love!’ | 20 |
| |
| —Better oblivion hide dead true loves, | |
| Better the night enfold, | |
| Than men, to eke the praise of new loves, | |
| Should lie about the old! * * * * * | |
| Oh! bitter thoughts I had in plenty. | 25 |
| But here ’s the worst of it— | |
| I shall forget, in Nineteen-twenty, | |
| You ever hurt a bit! | |
| |
