Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Lord Byron (1788–1824)

Stanzas: ‘Could Love for ever’

COULD Love for ever

Run like a river,

And Time’s endeavour

Be tried in vain—

No other pleasure

With this could measure;

And like a treasure

We’d hug the chain.

But since our sighing

Ends not in dying,

And, form’d for flying,

Love plumes his wing;

Then for this reason

Let ’s love a season;

But let that season be only Spring.

When lovers parted

Feel broken-hearted,

And, all hopes thwarted,

Expect to die;

A few years older,

Ah! how much colder

They might behold her

For whom they sigh!

When link’d together,

In every weather,

They pluck Love’s feather

From out his wing—

He ’ll stay for ever,

But sadly shiver

Without his plumage, when past the Spring.

(1819.)