Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902)

The End

I GAVE you more than love: many times more:

I gave mine honour into your fair keeping.

You lost mine honour: wherefore now restore

The love I gave; not dead, but cold and sleeping.

You loveless, I dishonoured, go our ways:

Dead is the past: dead must be all my days.

Death and the shadows tarry not: fulfil

Your years with folly and love’s imitation.

You had mine all: mine only now, to kill

All trembling memories of mine adoration.

That done, to lie me down, and die, and dream,

What once, I thought you were: what still, you seem.