Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume II. Love. 1904. | | | | VIII. Wedded Love | Sonnets
II. “Our love is not a fading, earthly flower” | | James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) |
| | | OUR love is not a fading, earthly flower: | |
| Its wingèd seed dropped down from Paradise, | |
| And, nursed by day and night, by sun and shower, | |
| Doth momently to fresher beauty rise: | |
| To us the leafless autumn is not bare, | 5 |
| Nor winter’s rattling boughs lack lusty green, | |
| Our summer hearts make summer’s fulness, where | |
| No leaf, or bud, or blossom may be seen: | |
| For nature’s life in love’s deep life doth lie, | |
| Love,—whose forgetfulness is beauty’s death, | 10 |
| Whose mystic key these cells of Thou and I | |
| Into the infinite freedom openeth, | |
| And makes the body’s dark and narrow grate | |
| The wind-flung leaves of Heaven’s palace-gate. | | | | |
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